


beautiful and annihilating

by advantagetexas



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Always a Happy Ending, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-The Unknowing (The Magnus Archives), Slow Burn, Tim Lives AU, basically the lonely takes hold of martin WAY quicker than in canon, jon can talk in tims dreams, to be added as updated - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 33
Words: 67,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29504910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/advantagetexas/pseuds/advantagetexas
Summary: But reality was a lot harsher than dreams. He admitted that to himself now, as he gently moved a piece of hair from Jon’s unblinking eye. Daisy Tonner was dead. Sasha James was dead. Daniel Stoker was still dead, or disappeared, or whatever woe begotten fate had befallen him at the hands of that wretched circus.And here was Tim. Alive. And forced to deal with the fallout.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Tim Stoker
Comments: 125
Kudos: 177





	1. where the spirit meets the bones (ch.1)

The night was startlingly warm, even for early August. The heat against his skin was oppressive, malicious. It passed around him in waves, like an ocean of flame. Though, that could probably be blamed on the wax museum burning down behind him. The fire crackled and roared, sending sparks flickering past his ear every so often. Tim felt sweat rolling down his temples as he sat on the curb, knees bent at odd angles to better support the dead weight in his lap. 

He looked up, across the street to where Basira was arguing with whoever was on the other end of her payphone call. Her shoulders were tense, fingers tapping against the rusted metal of the enclosure impatiently. She had gotten away from The Stranger’s influence first, through sheer force of will. In fact, she’d already been on the phone by the time he had emerged, scorched and exhausted, from the wreckage. She finally hung up, the slam of the receiver audible even at this distance, and crossed the street without looking. 

They made eye contact, just for a moment, before her eyes travelled down to the unconscious body nestled in Tim’s arms. He was cradling it, salt and pepper hair splayed out across his shoulder, iron red seeping into the floral fabric. Jon’s eyes were closed, his face peaceful, as if he were simply dreaming. His broken glasses protruded from the pocket of Tim’s shirt, wire frames mangled, one of the lenses shattered. One side of his face was covered in blood that oozed from a slice on his forehead. His clothes were covered in ash, his once black cardigan now a sickly, disgusting grey. 

“Tim...” Basira starts, recognition flickering behind her eyes, but he can’t bring himself to answer her. Jon’s chest doesn’t move. No ash-riddled air enters his lungs. No heart beats behind his ribs. 

“I couldn’t find Daisy.” It’s all he can think to say. Basira tenses up, waiting for more, but that’s the end of the story. He’d wanted to find Daisy first. Strong Daisy, CAPABLE Daisy. But she was gone, either lost in the building’s collapse, or, worse, stolen by the very force he’d come here to destroy. The force he’d been oh so gung-ho about martyring himself to defeat. There was something to be said about hindsight, he thought to himself, as Basira sat down on the curb next to him. He averted his eyes while she pulled down the edge of her singed hijab, staring at the uneven surface of the pavement. There were sirens in the distance now, getting closer with every passing moment. 

In a perfect world he wouldn’t have to think about it. In the delusion he’d created where good triumphed over evil, where things made any sort of sense, everything was okay. He had dealt a deathblow against the bastards that had taken his brother away from him. He had avenged Danny with his final breaths, knowing that in the end he had won. 

But reality was a lot harsher than dreams. He admitted that to himself now, as he gently moved a piece of hair from Jon’s unblinking eye. Daisy Tonner was dead. Jonathan Sims was dead. Sasha James was dead. Daniel Stoker was  _ still _ dead, or disappeared, or whatever woebegotten fate had befallen him at the hands of that wretched circus. And here was Tim. Alive. And forced to deal with the fallout. 

“Martin’s going to be gutted,” Basira finally says quietly. Tim nods, clearing his throat. 

“Yeah. That’s why I...I thought maybe...at least they can have an open casket funeral,” he finally settles on. After so many months of open rivalry and codependent malice, he just can’t bring himself to fully hate Jon. As much of an asshole as he was in life, he still had people that cared about him. People that loved him. That was why he’d pulled him, limp and lifeless, from the wreckage. Why he’d carried him, like he used to carry Sasha home from pub nights so long ago, step by shaky step, out to the curb where they now sat. The sirens were close now, lights blinking at the end of the road. 

The EMTs arrived, flanked by firefighters in two huge red behemoths. Basira got up to speak with them, whispering in angry clipped tones as one of them gestured at Jon’s body, and then to the waiting ambulance. 

The other paramedic ignored them, walking over to Tim with her hands in her pockets, as if this whole deal was just another day of work. She knelt down in front of him, giving him a pitying look that looked all too comfortable on her soft features. 

“Did Elias send you?” Tim asked, as she reached for Jon’s pulse slowly, as if he was a growling guard dog.

“We’re all sectioned.” She gave as an obvious non-answer. She withdrew her hand as he pulled the inert form of his dead boss closer to him, unwilling to let Elias get the final say in anything, ever again. 

“What happened to you?” he asked, feeling a pang of guilt wash over him as she visibly cringed, eyes squeezing shut as a memory hit her. 

“A hit and run. The car was...the driver...I’ve never seen that many spiders.” She blinked the thought away and looked at him again, that steeled “I’ve seen this shit before” look faded into an almost pleading stare. “Let us help your friend. Please.” 

“He’s not my friend.” All the same, Tim nodded, and the paramedic gestured for her partner to bring the stretcher. It’s a simple task to strap in a dead man, but he insisted on doing it himself, making sure each buckle was done properly as the EMTs waited, the taller one still arguing with Basira. They loaded Jon into the ambulance, and then promptly stood there, confused, as Tim hauled himself into the back. He took a seat, daring them to tell him to move. 

“Sir, we-” 

“He’s not going anywhere without me.” The smaller EMT sighed, and then waved her partner off as she climbed into the back, shutting the doors behind her. Her partner climbed into the driver’s seat and the engine roared to life, ambulance taking off down the road. Tim watched through the back window as Basira got smaller and smaller, eventually vanishing completely into the distance. 

The rest of the ride was completely silent. Tim sat there, watching the EMT’s every move as she cleaned the wound on Jon’s face, wiping away the smears of crusted blood. Neither they, nor the hospital they were taking him to could be trusted. Not if they were associated with Elias. He would not allow that pipe-murdering son of a bitch to do whatever freaky voodoo shit he intended on with Jon’s body. 

The ambulance jostled across the poorly upkept roads, bouncing with every pothole for what felt like hours. The sectioned EMT kept mercifully quiet, not attempting any more communication than the occasional glance at him as she continued to work on Jon. 

They finally arrive at the hospital -a hospital in London, no less- two hours and many miles later. The next hours are a haze of activity as he strong-arms his way into hospital rooms, hallways, wards, following Jon’s corpse around the building. 

“Bouchard,” the doctors keep whispering, “Bouchard’s patient. Bouchard’s man.” Tim wants to punch the name out of their mouths. But it’s Elias’s name that gets Jon into the hospital room. It’s Elias’s name that gets him priority with the brain injury resident. And it’s Elias’s name that gets him hooked up to the EEG. 

The doctors are all astounded, of course. Their sectioned counterparts watch in awe as the monitor shows a set of wiggling lines, even as Jon’s heart lies still in his chest. 

“He’s alive.” Martin practically knocks him over, arms wrapping him into a tight, comforting hug. They hold each other in the hallway outside Jon’s room, as doctors continue to flit in and out, all there to lay their eyes on ‘The Man Who Refuses To Die’. “In a coma, but alive.” 

Martin pulls away, wiping tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, and the thought that had been quietly simmering in the back of Tim’s mind suddenly pitches into a rolling boil. It should have been him. He should be the one lifeless and prone in a hospital bed, not Jon. There would have been no one left to cry for Tim Stoker. 

“Basira?” Martin asks, voice barely above a whisper as he asks a question he fears the answer to. 

“Alive,” Tim confirms, hating the relief on his friend’s face before he continues, “Daisy’s gone.” 

Martin’s hand clamps to his mouth, trapping a sob before it can escape. Tim pulls him into another hug, giving a glare over the taller man’s shoulder at a doctor down the hall that dares to stop and stare. It occurs then, that Martin and Daisy weren’t even friends. He’d never seen them share a single word that wasn’t tinged with some vague hatred. And yet, here was Martin Blackwood, sobbing over a woman he hated, just because she was loved by someone else. If there was still a god watching over this wretched world of theirs, Tim was sure that Martin had been sent down by her directly. 

It takes a moment, but eventually Martin’s breathing steadies and he composes himself, clearing his throat before speaking. 

“Can I see him?” 

“You can.”

“He’s not...I don’t know, under watch or something?”

“Oh, he very much is. But it’s amazing what you can get away with when you threaten a couple doctors,” Tim gives a smile for Martin’s benefit, and he returns it with an exasperated huff. 

“And what about you? Are you alright?” Tim shrugs, wincing as his sore shoulders give a pained twinge. 

“I’m alive.” That doesn’t seem to be a good enough answer for Martin, who gives him a discerning once-over, looking for an injury the doctors might have missed. “Really, I’m...I’m fine. I think I just want to go home now.”

The cab Martin calls him arrives quicker than he expected, so he says his goodbyes from Jon’s bedside, with empty promises to come back and visit, and hurries out to the car. He knew Martin would understand, that he wouldn’t ask more from him than he’d already given. The cabbie gives him an aghast look in the rearview mirror, but silently drives down the deserted late night streets back to the familiar sprawl of Tim’s neighborhood. 

His apartment is just how he’d left it, all clean and tidied and smelling vaguely of cinnamon incense. It’s as he dials Martin’s number on his old, disused landline that he realizes he hadn’t meant to come back. Not consciously, at least. And yet his ps4’s fan hummed away from its place under his TV. His work bag sat where it always did, right by the door, ready to be picked up at a moment’s notice. There was meat defrosting on the counter. There were signs of a life yet to be lived. 

“Hello?” Martin finally answered, in the same polite tone usually reserved for spam calls. 

“It’s Tim,” he responds quickly, not wanting to be hung up on. “This is just my home number.” 

“Oh. How did you-”

“Jon had your number written on his wrist,” he explains, “for...I don’t know why, actually.” There’s an intake of breath on the other end of the call, presumably Martin checking if he’s lying for whatever godforsaken reason. He’s not. “I memorized it on the way to the hospital.” It occurs, then, that that was probably the intention behind it in the first place. ‘If found dead, call this number to perform last rites’. 

“Right. Well, I’m glad you’ve gotten home safely,” Martin says, and there’s a moment of uncomfortable silence as the weight of the day presses down like a stone on Tim’s chest. He can’t bring himself to say anything, not even to crack a joke, as was his usual coping mechanism against the supernatural bullshit his job insisted on making him languish in. “Tim, can I ask you something?” Martin’s voice is soft and wanting, almost devoured by the static of the telephone receiver. “Why Jon?”

“Because he’s the big, bad Archivist,” Tim answers, interpreting the question as ‘why did this have to happen to him?’ 

“No, I mean why save him?” That wasn’t the answer he was expecting. “You hate him. You’ve made his life hell for months now. Why go back for him?” 

“Because he was there.” The truth jumps from his mouth before he can construct one of his elaborate lies around it. “He was there, and he had people who would miss him.” He leaves out the part where he thought Jon was dead. He leaves out the part where he’d cradled him anyway, that beautiful corpse covered in soot and blood, all sins in that moment forgiven. He suddenly remembers the glasses in his pocket, pulling them out and placing them on his counter as he continues, “I’d expect him to do the same for me.” 

The glasses are missing an arm, the right lense completely missing, staring emptily under the dim kitchen lights. The left is shattered into a spiderweb of cracks, splattered with dried red specks. They sit crooked on the particle board counter, watching in silence. 

“Thank you.” The open gratitude in Martin’s voice cuts Tim like a knife. “I’ll...will I see you at work?”

“With any luck, no,” he replies, and there’s a small pause before Martin speaks again. 

“So...see you on Monday, then?” It's not funny. It’s  _ really  _ not funny. Tim laughs anyway, louder than he’s laughed at anything in a good while. He can hear Martin laughing on the other end of the line, and for just that moment, everything is fine. 

“Sure, see you on Monday, Martin.” He presses the ‘end call’ button before he can think too much about it, before he can become afraid of being alone with his thoughts again. He rehooks the receiver and heads straight for his bedroom, only pausing to remove his shoes before stepping on the carpet. He knows he should shower before he gets into bed, but he just can’t bring himself to do it, can’t bring himself to change out of the clothes he fully believed he’d die in.


	2. ch.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim goes back to work

Jon stares him down across the table, sipping his seemingly endless mug of tea as was their nightly ritual. Tim refuses to look at him, staring blankly up at the tiles of the drop ceiling as a clock ticks away somewhere in the background. 

“Go back to work, Tim.” He continues to stare at the ceiling, not acknowledging that anything had been said. “You’re making yourself sick.” 

“That place makes me sick,” he pushes. He’d been having this same dream for the past week. His comatose boss admonishing him for “shirking his responsibilities” or whatever. This cruel joke his subconscious was playing on him was beginning to wear thin, each successive night becoming more and more grating. 

“You’re not helping anyone by doing this to yourself.” 

“Why don’t  _ you _ go back, then?” He knows it must just be his own misplaced guilt, but when he looks at Jon, the pain painted across his features almost looks real. His eyes are ringed with deep bags, his pockmarked, scarred skin abnormally pale against his shock of dark hair. The cut on his forehead is nearly healed now, pale brown against his deeper complexion. 

“You know I can’t, Tim.” They’ve had this same conversation ad nauseum, more times than he can count, and now even the version of Jon that lives in his brain has had enough of his petty bullshit. 

“Right, because you live in my head and exist solely to torment me in the hours I’d very much like to spend  **not** thinking about my life and all the ways in which it’s royally fucked.” 

“I keep telling you, I’m not-” Jon sighs and takes another sip of tea. “I just want you to take care of yourself.”

“Because you cared so much about that when you were alive.” That hits a nerve, it seems, and he sets his cup onto the table with a loud thunk. 

“I don’t see how my actions in life should reflect on-” 

“Jon, you stalked me! You took pictures of my apartment!” Tim stands from his chair, the anger building in him as Jon fixes him with that same withering look he remembers so vividly from his performance evaluations. “That’s not exactly the kind of thing that builds lasting friendships! You have to understand, I’m not  _ like you _ . I don’t want to know what’s going on. I don’t want to figure out whatever little game Elias is playing with us. I want  **out.** I want to be  **done** .” 

“I see. So you’ve gotten your revenge and now you’ve decided it’s over.” Jon, too, stands up, resting his palms on the surface of the table as he stares Tim down, the latter feeling his heart beat in his chest like a trapped rabbit.

“That’s not-”

“No, it is. You’ve avenged dear Danny. You’ve  _ won _ . And now you’d like to go home. Timothy Stoker has gotten his, and fuck anyone else caught in the crossfire.” 

“Fuck. You. And fuck whatever part of my brain is making you up.” Jon stands there for another moment, and then finally sits back down, folding his hands in front of him on the table. “The swearing gives it away.” 

“I don’t-” Nightmare Jon pinches the bridge of his nose, and huffs, which is admittedly very Jon-like. “I swear quite a lot, actually. It’s not my fault you’ve decided that it doesn’t fit my ‘persona’. But fine. Even playing by your abysmal logic, there’s a reason I’m here.” 

“Get to the point.”

“Martin.” Ah, there it was. That pang of irrational guilt. Jon must have seen it on his face too, because the self-satisfied aura that radiated off of him was almost visible. “Have you even called him yet? Let him know you’re alright? Let him know what happened to m- to Daisy.” 

That was...strange. 

“What kind of asshole do you take me for? Of course I did. He visits you in the hospital every morning.” He’d learned that from the messages left on his answering machine that he swore to himself he would reply to one of these days. Martin called him at 9am on the dot every day, undeterred by the lack of response, and left sunshiney messages about how Jon’s ‘condition’ was progressing and updates from the previous day of work. Apparently they had a new boss. Peter something. Lucius. Lupin. Locus? He couldn’t remember. 

“He does?” Jon seemed shocked, for whatever reason. Tim just rolled his eyes, tapping his foot impatiently on the tile floor. 

“Of course he does. Martin takes care of people. It’s kind of his whole thing.” 

“Who’s taking care of  _ him _ ?” 

+++++++++++++++++++

Tim jolts awake, panting and out of breath as if he’s just run a marathon. Another nightmare, he presumes. He never remembers their contents, only the vague sense of terror they instill in him when he finally wakes, sweaty and afraid (the two worst things to be) in the wee hours of the morning. His bedside clock reads a cheery 7:30 am in bright red numerals as he drags himself into a quick shower. 

It reads 8am by the time he finishes off a bowl of oatmeal afterwards, driven to near ravenous hunger by whatever force is calling him back to his desk, back to the archive. And then, as usual, he rushes back to the bathroom to puke it all up, the wave of nausea hitting him like a truck. 

This is it, he thinks, as he clutches the cold porcelain, this is the rest of his life. He would continue to grow sicker and sicker, and eventually he would die alone in his apartment. How long would it take for someone to find him? Would Martin come looking for him? Or would his body stay right where he finally dropped, rotting into the floorboards as everything that once made him alive slowly disappeared from living memory?

He considered the possibility as he dragged himself up to brush his teeth a second time, the mint causing his teeth themselves to burn in pain from the sensitivity the acid was causing. That was the point, right? He had done his whole ‘big damn heroes’ bit. Saved the entire world while he was at it. No one could blame him for calling it there. 

It’s the polaroid that changes his mind. He’d hidden it inside the medicine cabinet when Jon was in the middle of his stalker phase, afraid that he’d burgle the apartment and take it as ‘evidence’. It stares back at him as he replaces his toothpaste, white border stark against the wooden door, until he pulls it down, holding it like a precious gem. 

They’d taken it the night they all received their promotions. He was on the end, striking an obnoxious pose for the camera. Sasha, the  _ real _ Sasha, was on the other side of the frame, caught with her mouth wide open and her eyes screwed shut, mid-laugh. His gaze lingered on her, as it always did. He tried to memorize the shape of her glasses, the curve of her shoulder, the way her curls seemed to take up more space than she did. The second he looked away, he knew he would forget her again, replace her with that  _ thing _ , so he lingered. She had been his best friend, the only person in the world he truly trusted. And now she was forgotten. 

And then, in the center of the frame was Martin. He was looking at the camera awkwardly, as if embarrassed to be the center of attention. “Martin’s First Pub Night :)” the unfamiliar handwriting at the bottom of the photo stated. Tim sighs, internally cursing himself for what he was about to do. 

He gets ready for work. He puts on his shoes. He picks up his bag. The microwave timer reads 8:30 as he stows the picture in the clear pocket of his wallet, the faces of his friends smiling back at him through the plastic. His friends, he reminded himself. Friends. Whatever beef he had with Jon and Elias and the ever-watching Eye that loomed heavily over his life and livelihood, he didn’t have with Martin. He was an innocent bystander, unlucky enough to be pulled into their little 5 act tragedy by nothing more than his own unending compassion and selflessness. 

He picks up Jon’s glasses and places them gently into the pocket of his collared shirt before locking the apartment door behind him. Everything is the same as it was a week ago. The door to his building still clangs shut with that abrasive clunking noise. The tube is crowded and vaguely wet from the late summer air. The coffee shop by the institute is in the middle of its morning rush. The tiny barista behind the counter hands him his latte with a stuttered apology for the “long wait”. It’s only been five minutes. He tips her an extra pound and reassures her that it’s really no big deal, and she smiles widely, telling him to have a wonderful day. 

Nothing has changed. They’ve ‘saved the world’ and nothing at all has changed. It’s enough to sour his appetite before he even takes a sip of his coffee. He manages to pawn it off on Rosie, who is ever so glad to see him, and did he enjoy his vacation, and did he get the memo about Mr. Lukas taking over while Mr. Bouchard was...indisposed? He assures her that yes, he did, and yes, he had, and oh, they just messed up his order and he felt bad enough to take it anyway, nothing’s actually wrong with the coffee, he swears. 

By the time he makes it to his desk he’s already worn out. He’s the first one in today, but that surprises him very little. Martin would still be on his way back from the hospital at this time. God knows where Basira and Melanie were, but with what little regard they held for the institute’s rules, he doubted they would be the most punctual employees. 

So he gets to work. He digitizes two statements, both mentioning a party out in Chelsea. One claims to have seen a ghostly figure in the basement, twitching and writhing on the ground. The second claims to have seen a ghostly figure approach them while they were tripping on K2 in their friend’s basement. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together, and so he files them both under “Mundane Occurrence”.

It’s 9:10 when the door to the office swings open, a haggard Martin stepping in holding an armful of shoddily stacked paperwork that seems to be actively attempting to escape his grasp. 

“Whoa, hey, let me help you with that,” Tim offers, grabbing the wobbling top of the stack and placing it on his desk. 

“Thanks! I- Tim! You’re back!” 

“You say that every time,” he jokes, as Martin sets the various stacks in piles on his desk. They’d had almost this exact same conversation before, when he had finally been released from quarantine after the Prentiss attack. Back then it had been easy to fix the awkward silence, he had just made some awful joke about Sasha still liking him even if he had worms in his face. Now, he couldn’t think of any words that would cut through as they just stood there, waiting for the other to speak first, to explain themselves. 

Martin was tired. That was the first thing that came to mind. The bags under his eyes were approaching carry-on levels, and his hair was sticking up in every direction, as if he had slept with it wet and just left it like that. Even his smile seemed dimmer under the fluorescent lights of the office, though that could very well just be Tim’s imagination. 

“So...Peter Lukas,” is all he finally manages. Martin nods, looking back at the stacks of paperwork. “Is he a better boss? Treating you well, I hope.”

“He...the institute pays well.”

“That bad, huh?”

“If I have to explain the payroll system to him  **again** I think I’ll drop dead right then and there.” Tim can’t help but laugh, and Martin seems to relax a little, giving a quiet chuckle at his own joke. “He’s not so bad. We get along really well, actually.” 

“You’re not gonna pull a Jon and go all spooky on me, are you?” He immediately regrets saying it, as Martin cringes and gives him a sheepish look. “Sorry, old habits. How is he, by the way?” 

“He’s alright,” Martin replies, and for some strange reason he sounds almost muffled. Quieter. “I saw him this morning, but no new developments. I was going to call you about it when I got in, actually. But you’re here, so...skipped a few steps.” 

“Yeah, about those, listen, I-” Tim starts, but Martin cuts him off, his tone so apologetic that he may as well be bowing at his feet and asking for forgiveness. 

“I know, I’m sorry for bothering you. I just didn’t know who else to call. Basira’s gone off somewhere, Elias is in jail and I honestly don’t want to speak with him anyway, and Melanie is...Melanie. She doesn’t exactly like Jon.” 

“I don’t exactly like Jon either.” 

“Yeah but you...” ‘You saved him’ remains unsaid, and instead he continues, “...she REALLY doesn’t like him. So I’m sorry for all the voicemails.” 

“I was going to apologize for not calling you back, not get mad at you for calling in the first place. I was, er, we’ll say indisposed for a while.” Martin makes a face at that, obviously concerned. He sits down at his desk, just next to Tim’s, and swivels the chair to face in his direction, clearly waiting for an explanation. 

“I got...sick,” Tim continues, feeling like he owes at least some sanitized version of the truth. “It’s what happens every time I try to quit. I get really sick.” 

“I would say you should’ve called me, but...” It’s exactly why he hadn’t. One conversation and Martin would have somehow materialized in his apartment, ready to forget all his earthly commitments in the pursuit of nursing him back to health. And he would have done it from the goodness of his own heart, without complaint. Tim didn’t deserve him. 

“I got better, it’s fine,” he says with what he hopes is a reassuring smile. 

“Alright, alright. But when you get your new cell phone make sure you give me the number, okay? I’ll always answer, no matter what.” It’s then that Tim remembers he doesn’t have a cell phone anymore. And that he’ll have to go through the mundane hell of going out and actually purchasing a new one. And transferring his data out of the cloud. And putting one of those horrid little screen protectors on it, the kind that never really goes on right without ugly air bubbles underneath the plastic. For fucks sake. Even entirely within the bounds of the ‘normal’ world, he was still being forced to suffer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we love an unreliable narrator in this house!


	3. ch.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim gives a statement

“How are things at the office?” Jon, or NotJon, as he’d taken to calling the projection that lived inside his dreams, asked as he once again took a big sip from that stupid mug. 

“You ask me this every night, and every night is the same answer. Fine. Melanie is Melanie. Basira comes and goes. I haven’t seen Martin in a week, so I assume he’s busy-”

“I haven’t seen him either,” NotJon says, frowning. 

“What?”

“I can feel him beside me, sometimes,” the figment admits, after a moment. He looks down at his hands, covered in scars, as if looking for traces of something. “But not recently. Not as often.” 

“You can’t feel anything. You exist in my head.”

“How many times must I-” he sighs, starts over, “I don’t know how long it’s going to take to convince you that I  _ am  _ Jon. I am the same man that is lying in the hospital bed in 2613. We are the same person.” 

“Listen, this job has made me believe in a lot of freaky things, but I draw the line at talking to ghosts.” 

“I’m not dead! And I’m trying to have a genuine conversation with you. I am making an effort to communicate, and I would appreciate it if-” 

“If what?” he cut NotJon off with a dismissive wave that sent the tips of the other man’s ears red with rage. “How is it my problem that you feel lonely because you’re such a prick that no one wants to come see your slowly decaying body?”

“Because I’m not worried about me!” NotJon shouts, slamming his hands down on the tabletop. Tim stops, jaw clamping shut as the room fills once more with thick silence. “I’m worried about Martin,” he continues through gritted teeth, staring Tim down. 

“He gave up on you. Get over it,” he finally responds, and Jon laughs, honest to god chuckles in his goddamn face. 

“You and I both know that Martin Blackwood does  **not** give up on people. Even people...even people like me. So something more sinister must be going on.” He had a point. A strong point, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. 

“Look, I’ll ask him about it, alright. I’ll ask. Now will you leave me alone?” NotJon gives him a strange appraising look, and then sighs and nods. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Tim wakes up, face down in the innumerable pillows he’d bought in the vague hope that they would chase off whatever was tormenting him in sleep, to no avail. He groans, throwing the blankets off and shuffling into the kitchen. The oven clock blinks a solid 5am, rays of early morning sun chasing their way through his living room curtains as he fishes a half-finished bubble tea out of the back of the fridge. It tastes like that weird conglomerate Fridge Flavor that all cheap appliances seemed to bequeath on open containers of food, but it was calories and it was easy, so he finished it. 

Jon’s glasses stared at him from their sentinel post beside his keys, ready to be carried, talisman like, in Tim’s pocket. That shattered lense seemed to bore directly into him as he gave his tea one last sip, chucking the cup into the trash. He picked them up, turning them over in his hands as if they’d somehow become something else, but they stubbornly remained the same. He sighed, placing them back on the counter as he shuffled back to the bedroom to change. 

An hour and one exorbitantly expensive uber later, and he was standing outside the door of 2613, heart racing as he built up the courage to turn the handle. The glasses sat heavily in his pocket as he finally swung the door open, readying himself for whatever horror awaited him. That was always how it went with these strange ideas he had. They would occur to him, apropos of nothing, and he would dutifully follow whatever edict his brain delivered to him. 

But there was no horror to be found this morning. The hospital room was bright and sunny, light streaming down over the unconscious body laying in the bed against the north wall. Tim walks over, awkwardly sitting in the chair already positioned by the bedside. Jon looks as if he’s just sleeping peacefully, his face at rest losing the severe look he usually carried like a weapon in his waking hours. He’d always been a somewhat gaunt man, but now his cheeks were beginning to take on a sunken appearance, cheekbones showing through. 

“Hello, Jon,” Tim starts, knowing that he is essentially talking to himself. It doesn’t feel right to just sit there in silence, though, so he talks. “I don’t really know why I’m here, if we’re being honest. I still hate you. But I wish you were awake so that I could see you make that screwed up little face at me when I said that.” 

The body in the bed says nothing, doesn’t react, and somehow that just makes Tim feel worse. Someone has tied his long hair back into a neat plait, but pieces have come loose, giving the impression of an overworked professor, which was honestly quite fitting. 

“Martin misses you,” Tim continues, undeterred. “He visits you every day, you know. You really fucked that one up. Should’ve just let the goon squad and I burn the world down on our own; stayed home and had a nice dinner date with him or something. But no. You’re dead in a hospital bed, forced to listen to me tell you all about your many, MANY fuck ups.” 

Jon says nothing, because that’s all he is now. Nothing but silence. 

“It was supposed to be me, you goddamn martyr. The man with nothing to lose, no one to grieve for him, giving his all to save the world? Now that’s a perfect story. And now, because you’re a selfish fucking  **prick** , you’ve got a fancy hospital bed and a bunch of mourners ready to wait on you, hand and foot. Fucking bastard.”

He spends the next couple hours telling Jon exactly what a fucking asshole he is. Going in depth into every flaw, every shitty thing he’d ever witnessed him do. Every stupid decision that had made Martin lose his mind with worry. By the time the nurses come in, voluntelling him to get out so that they could run another bevvy of meaningless tests, his shiny new phone tells him that it’s somehow 9:30. Martin never showed up. 

It consumes his thoughts the entire train ride to work. He’d always just assumed that when he didn’t see Martin at work that he’d visited Jon at the very least. He must be taking a full sick day, too ill to even leave the house. That was the only explanation that made sense to Tim, so as he sits down at his desk, he places a call. 

There’s a moment of silence, and then a loud chiptune song starts to play from across the room. Martin was here. His phone was on his desk. And he hadn’t visited Jon. Tim hangs up, setting his phone onto a file gently, as if any force would shatter it. He doesn’t see Martin at all that day. 

He doesn’t see him the next day either, though he sits there beside Jon for hours in the early morning; killing time by surgically dissecting every perceived slight he’d ever thrown Martin’s way and telling him just what a shit person that made him. Nobody interrupts him, save for the nurse telling him to leave. 

The next day is much of the same. He and Jon’s lifeless body have a long discussion about how fucking off to America and getting yourself kidnapped in the process has got to be in the top two worst ideas of all time. And not two. Martin does not visit. 

The next day he brings a box of fancy chocolates, ones that Martin had told him at one point were Jon’s favorites, and sits there, eating them alone in silence as they wait. Martin does not visit. 

He brings his console to the hospital the next day, thinking that maybe he has the timing wrong and that Martin is visiting at night, and hooks it up to the TV on the south wall. He plays GTA V at full volume for hours until the nurses tell him to leave. Martin does not visit. 

On the fifth day he brings nothing, simply slumping into the chair at the bedside as he sets his work bag on the floor. It’s relatively late now, the evening sun setting the world outside the window aglow with orange light. 

“You see that?” he asks, folding his arms on the raised bed so that he can rest his head on them like a pillow. He tilts his head at the window, as if Jon will suddenly remember that he can move and turn to look with him. “No, I suppose you don’t.” It’s then that he hears the click of the tape, the winding of a mechanism somewhere in the room, and sighs to himself. “Well, it’s not for you, is it?” 

Jon says nothing. Tim groans, hiding his face in his arms for a moment, wishing that the blasted thing would just go away. 

“I don’t even have a statement. Try again later.” But the recorder spools ever onward. “Fine. Fine. But you’re not getting a fancy one out of me. One page. Tops.” And he feels it well up within him. The story that whatever entity collects these stupid tapes wants. Statement of Timothy Stoker, Archival Assistant at the Magnus Institute, London, regarding his boss, Jonathan Sims, The Archivist. Statement recorded by subject, August 21th, 2017. Statement begins. 

“Jon was always a bastard,” he starts, head still resting on his arms as he looks over at the still face of the very man he was speaking about. “But that was alright. I kind of liked it. Sasha and I had bitchy tendencies. Martin too, if you squinted pretty hard and looked between all the lines of practiced niceties. He fit right in, even if he’d hate to admit it. Right down to being bad at his goddamn job. We all had that problem too. Martin’s reports are too flowery. Mine are too short because I honestly just don’t fucking care anymore. The only one of us with any talent was Sasha and...yeah. Sasha took the brain cell with her when she...we had more in common than I liked to admit, is my point. 

But Jon would  _ never _ admit that. Preened around the office like he was god’s gift to archive-kind. It got even worse after the worms incident. He started hanging out in those tunnels, going nuts and stalking us like WE were the enemy. That never sat right with me, but in hindsight I guess he made some valid points. Prick. 

And then the murder. Blah blah blah, don’t judge a book and all that.” He feels his stomach shift, his mind searching through itself like a rolodex. He’d forgotten how unpleasant this feeling was. 

“But that was never my problem with Jon. That isn’t why I hated him so much. I hated him because while I was busy losing everything and everyone I cared about, he actively pushed people away. He rejected the one thing that I couldn’t have and I hated him for being so goddamn selfish. Every time I saw Martin frown after leaving his office I hated him more and more. It grew in me like a fire until...until we went to stop The Unknowing. Until I was holding him in my arms, dragging him out from under a piece of rubble. 

And then I couldn’t bring myself to hate him anymore.” He tries to convince himself that his own words aren’t true, simply a statement being torn from him by a malicious deity hellbent on his personal destruction. But he can’t. “Even now, I can’t hate him. He looks so peaceful. So fulfilled. He’s stolen that from me, too. That final death. Jonathan Sims is deja vu as a person. I’m not sure if that’s some side effect of you,” he pauses, as if the tape recorder will respond, and it doesn’t, “or if that’s just how he is. Sometimes I look at him, at things he does, and I see myself and it scares me. I’m not sure if it’s fear of being like him, or fear of him being too much like me...I went to a carnival once. Scandalous, I know. But this carnival had a funhouse, the kind with all the warped mirrors. They all changed my reflection into funny shapes for Danny and I to laugh at. It was great. Except for one in the near center of it. As far as I know it was just a regular mirror. Some drunk patron smashing a custom piece and them having to replace it on the sly for cheap. But after going through a hundred fucked up reflections, seeing my own body, reflected perfectly back to me just felt...wrong? Everything just where I knew it should be, but my brain was so used to seeing myself mangled that it just couldn’t process a proper reflection.  _ That’s _ Jon. That’s who he is, to me.” 

The tape recorder hums for a moment longer, and then the noise is gone, the room returning once more to the silence of the setting sun. 

“Statement ends,” Tim adds sarcastically. He looks once more at Jon, still comatose, and then grabs his bag and leaves. He waits for the tape recorder to turn on again, this time on the tube, or in the foyer of his building, or even in his own home. He waits up for hours in bed, listening for the sound of the magnetic reel springing to life, but it never does. 


	4. ch.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim continues to visit Jon in the hospital

“You’ve been quiet the past couple days,” Tim offers, and NotJon simply looks at him across the table in the nebulous dreamscape they share, taking a sip from that ever present mug. 

“I’ve been thinking,” NotJon offers, though his expression suggests that there’s more to the sentence than he’s letting on. 

“Well think out loud, then. If I’m going to be trapped here with you, the least you can do is entertain me.” 

NotJon shoots him an exasperated look, and Tim can’t help but notice he brings the mug up for another sip just to hide the smile beginning to bloom across his face. Tim grins back at him as he continues to pretend to be affronted. 

“I specifically remember you telling me that you ‘don’t want to know what’s going on’. It would be remiss of me to disrespect that very specific edict.” Tim rolls his eyes as the insufferable dream throws his own words back in his face. 

“Well, y’know what? Changed my mind. It’s not like I can even remember my dreams when I wake up, so it can’t hurt.” It was something he’d noticed in the past few weeks since he’d begun to visit Jon in the hospital, that strange feeling that could only be described as ignorant knowing. In his waking moments, he retained nothing of what he and this projection of his own mind discussed, or the fact that he was even having the dreams to begin with. But there were...echoes, he supposed; claws dug into his psyche so deeply that the barrier between his unconscious and conscious minds had become permeable. 

“You do remember your dreams.”

“Not clearly. I get twinges, but that’s about it.” NotJon laughs, sounding so much like the real Jon that the resemblance becomes uncanny. “What? What’s so funny?”

“I just find it hard to believe that you’d visit me so often if I wasn’t here every night reminding you of my existence. The last time we spoke face to face you seemed more than ready to throw me to the dogs yourself if the Circus didn’t get me first.” It’s a step too far and NotJon knows it as he watches the smile slide off of Tim’s face like warm wax, being replaced by a deep, contemplative frown. 

“That’s not true. Or maybe it used to be. But then...”

“Tim, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed the issue.” 

“The Circus  _ did _ get you,” he points out, and NotJon’s face becomes a veritable mask of confusion. “Out there, you're as good as dead, Jon. I held your body while we waited for the paramedics. I, of all people, should know.”

“You did what?” his voice is soft, gently questioning as Tim looks down at the surface of the table, as if the tablecloth has suddenly sprouted an interesting pattern. 

“It’s one thing to think you hate someone, to want to see them suffer, but it’s a completely different beast to actually see them afterwards.” There’s a pause as NotJon lets him collect his thoughts, not wanting to further upset him. “You just looked so...broken. Just this lifeless thing. And you’re already covered in scars so it was just...it just made me  _ sad _ . Knowing that you’d been through so much and that this was it. This was the end of your line. A burning hole in the ground.”

“I still carry your glasses around,” Tim admits, with a self-deprecating laugh. “Isn’t that the worst thing you’ve heard? I basically killed you and now I carry your eyes around like a war trophy. The Eye would be oh so fucking proud.” 

“You didn’t kill me, Tim.” He waves the thought away, finally looking back up at NotJon and trying to put on a brave face. 

“I want to talk about something else. Is that alright?”

“I...sure. How’s Martin?”

“How’s...” the thought roiled in Tim’s mind as he tried to remember. Martin. He had a coworker named Martin. Was that who Jon was talking about? He didn’t see him very often, but he always tried to be polite to the guy. Seemed like he was really busy working on whatever project Lukas had him set to. But no, that wasn’t right, was it? Martin. Martin. Martin. 

Something is wrong.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Tim’s eyes flicker open, a beam of light shining through the curtains at just the right angle to shine right into his goddamn face. Great way to start a morning. He grumbles about it as he cooks breakfast, complaining to his scrambled eggs about the logistics of sun and how it should REALLY be more highly considered in the field of architecture. 

The rest of his day seems to follow the same pattern of small but annoying inconveniences. He spills his coffee across a set of reports and has to fight the xerox machine tooth and nail for a replacement. Melanie, who he is normally at least on cordial terms with, is on some sort of tear, snapping at him every time he asks her for information on the statement they’re supposed to be coordinating on. His shoelace gets stuck in the wheels of his chair and he spends his entire break trying to unstick it. 

By the time he finally sits down on the tube he’s exhausted. Even more so by the time he finally walks through the door of 2613, slumping into the chair by the bedside and just letting his bag fall where it may. Jon is just the same as he’d left him the day before, still inert and unmoving. The braid he’d attempted to redo is already falling out of the hair tie and he sighs. He’d ask one of the nurses to fix it for him. Just couldn’t get the hang of braiding hair no matter how hard he tried. 

He reached for his bag, pulling out the file he’d smuggled out of the archive and setting it down on the bed. It was one of the “vintage historical” statements, though he had some personal qualms with 1985 being considered “vintage”. It was another of his stupid ideas, bringing statements to try to entice Jon back to the land of the living. A séance, of sorts, if you really stretched the meaning of the word. 

“Got a statement for you, boss. Old one. From...” he checks the details, just to be sure. “Ooh, from America. New York, even. Statement of Anna Torres, regarding the park near her home. Given July- well, you get the idea.” He places the folder on the bedside cabinet, on top of the previous two, still unmoved from where he’d left them. 

“I read it to be sure it was a good one. She gets lost in a park. The fog closed in on her, or something. Pretty typical spooky bullshit, if you ask me, but she had an interesting method of getting back. Figured maybe you could apply her theory,” he laughs to himself, really only half joking as he buried the lead so far that it could be considered a fossil. 

The woman in the statement claimed to have suffered a traumatic brain injury after being hit by a car on the way home from a walk. She went on to proselytize about her seemingly eternal watch of the park she had visited earlier that day, each moment blending so seamlessly into the others that she believed she spent  _ years _ roaming the gravel paths. She claimed to have only made it back by remembering her cat waiting for her at home. She claimed that when she finally “escaped”, close as that term fits to her ending, she realized that she had, in fact been awake for her entire journey. Or at least her body was. 

The 20-year old college student found herself suddenly awake in the body of her 45-year old self, having somehow lived an entire life in the meantime. The cat she had tried so desperately to come back to, that had brought her back from the brink, had passed peacefully of old age years previously. 

The final paragraph had sold him on bringing Jon the statement, a quick few sentences directed to the unfortunate girl’s lost love. 

‘You were so loved, my dear. Even when I could not utter your name in life, I adored you in my dreams. I ran to you, even when I could not remember you.’

He liked the sentiment. Of being pulled ever backward from the brink by love. He doubted it was true, as the statement giver did fully admit to having a traumatic injury; but even the most miniscule notion that this world could foster connections more powerful than hatred and fear was enough for him. There was no logical reasoning for this, but he thought Jon might somehow share the same sentiment. 

He waits, as he always does, for a response that would not come. The warm silence of the hospital room continues on, light now beginning to dim outside the window. The days are getting shorter now, the nights devouring more and more hours as the weather turns chilly. It occurs to him to bring one of his spare jackets to leave at the hospital. If... _ when _ , he tells himself, when Jon wakes up he’s going to need one for the change in temperature. 

He stops for a moment, wondering when he had come to the conclusion that it was his job to take care of Jon. Didn’t he have someone to come look after him? Tim had a vague memory of that being the case. A boyfriend or something. Tall and blonde. The memory sticks in his mind, but the man himself is nebulous. His head starts to hurt if he thinks too much about his face. 

Probably a boyfriend then. Someone that Tim had met once and had subsequently decided that a comatose glorified librarian wasn’t worth their effort. The thought pulled at Tim, made him feel irrevocably sad. Jon really had lost everything, then. His job, his partner, his life. All he had left were his dreams and the company of a man who once told him he was a monster. He wasn’t even sure if he still had an apartment to go back to. He didn’t seem like the type to have his bills set to pay automatically, and more than that, unless the institute was still paying his salary for some reason, he would eventually run out of money. 

Tim sighs, adding another item to his mental checklist. He’d have to buy a few extra blankets, too, then. Just in case Jon needed somewhere to stay until he got back on his feet. His couch wasn’t exactly a five star resort, but it was free, so if Jon had any complaints he could keep them very much to himself. 

He crosses his arms on the bed and lays his head down on them, still adding things to the list in his head. He’d need to pick up a new toothbrush, too. And a couple extra dishes. He was a single man in a tiny apartment, he was pretty sure he only had a single cereal bowl to his name. Cups too, then. He’d have to find a nice tea mug, since he knew Jon was barely functional without his morning cup of chai. Tim wasn’t sure when he’d found that out. While they’d worked in Research together, maybe. The details were unclear. 

He wakes up a few hours later to the nurse gently nudging him awake. The window outside now showed a rainy London evening, all dark sky and wet air. She apologizes for bothering him and asks him if she’d like her to call him a cab. He looks back to Jon, whose hand was now uncurled, just barely slid toward where he had just been dozing. Must have bumped into him at some point, he thinks. He tells the nurse yes, and thank you, a cab would be nice. 


	5. ch.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim fights The Meat Man

“Did you get a new mug?” he asks NotJon, pointing at the “World’s Okayest Boss” mug that now sat in front of him, radiating steam and hints of cinnamon. 

“Yes,” he admits, with a sidelong glance at it. Then his expression changes, shifts into something deeper, more concentrated. He looks Tim directly in the eye and says: “Martin Blackwood”. The name doesn’t ring a bell. 

The tube to the office is crowded that morning, but Tim remains unbothered. He’s gone almost a week without a nightmare now, as far as he can tell, and the joy of not having to wake up in a dead panic every morning is infectious. 

He says hello to Rosie on the way in, and even she beams, giving him a wave. He waves back at her, and accidentally bumps into someone, knocking a set of files out of their hand. He immediately drops to help pick them up, face red with embarrassment. 

“Sorry, wasn’t looking where I was going,” he apologizes, only looking up to hand the files back and...oh. He didn’t recognize the man smiling back at him, but something about him seemed familiar. 

“Oh, it’s no problem!” Yeah, something about him was  _ really _ familiar. The man was taller than Tim, which was already a feat, with curly blond hair and tortoiseshell glasses. His smile was wide and warm, as if he’d never had a malicious thought in his life. He was really cute, actually. 

“Do I know you from somewhere?” he asks, and something changes about the man’s expression almost imperceptibly. All at once the smile becomes a well-meaning mask. “Sorry, dumb question. I work in the archive, we don’t get out much.” He hopes that’s the problem, that he’s just accidentally been rude to a new coworker. He had to be a coworker, right? He was in the building, after all. Yeah, that must be it. 

Before the other man can respond, there’s a piercing scream from down the hall, stopping the conversation in its tracks. Tim doesn’t hesitate before sprinting off toward it, moving the other man gently out of his way. It came from the archive, it came from  _ his _ office. He stutters to a halt as he throws open the door, coming face to face with a hulking monster of a...man? 

Whatever this thing was, it was definitely once human. Or humans. It was hard to tell from the sheer meat of the thing, exposed skin peeled back to reveal sparkling patches of bright ivory bone, carved away to show through like jewels in the expanse of muscle it carried. It grinned, wide and sharp, with too many teeth, as it looked down at him. 

“Archivist,” it roared, more throat than speech. “I’ve been sent for you.” 

“‘m not the archivist,” Tim mutters, before taking a step back as the thing advances on him. There’s screaming elsewhere in the institute now. Those who are unaware of the dangers being dealt with by their colleagues now forced to reconcile with whatever horror is currently engaged in tearing them limb from limb. The meat monster pauses, makes a strangled noise and stops. Tim takes the opportunity to aim a swift kick right where he thinks the thing’s nuts should be and actually hits something. Meat Man doubles over in pain, a knife blade embedded in his shoulder, being ripped viciously by Melanie, trying to use her body as a counterweight to gut the thing.

He tries to make eye contact with her, but she’s too focused on the monster, her eyes...oh god. Melanie’s eyes are bleeding, but still intact as two tracks run all the way down her cheeks to the war grimace she holds as she stabs the thing again and again and again. She doesn’t even seem to notice. The ringing in his ears gets louder, it starts drowning out everything, making him move as if underwater. 

Meat Man finally manages to throw Melanie off and she hits the ground,  _ hard. _ She doesn’t even try to get up, knocked cold as the monster looks back up at Tim. There’s nowhere to go. The hall to his left leads to the archive proper, the one in front blocked by 17 cubic tons of conglomerate meat, and behind him is the Head Archivist’s office. The same office that has Jon’s great-grandfather’s army-issued talwar hanging as decoration on the wall. Bloody fucking brilliant.

He essentially smashes backward through the door, tossing the first thing he can reach at the glass front panel of the frame. It shatters in a spray of glass shards and the cracked ceramic of the mug he’d thrown. Disregarding the mess, he pulls the sword down off its hooks, the immaculately kept blade sparkling under the lights as he turns to brandish it at the meat thing that is now encroaching onto the hallway. 

The weight of the hilt feels almost perfect as he swings it directly at the Meat Man, aiming for its head, but clipping the top of its shoulder and making it roar in pain. 

“Get the FUCK,” he yells, swinging again, shaving a chunk off of its chest. “OUT.” Another swing, as the thing barrels through the door of the office, just far enough to be within dangerous range. “OF.” A failed swipe, the air whiffing as the blade bisects it. “MY.” Another swing, the monster catching the blade in its palm, bleeding as it pulls him close by it. He can smell it now, all iron and viscera, like an open market made sentient. Meat is meat, afterall, even human meat. “ARCHIVE.” Tim aims a kick directly at the thing’s stomach, sending it staggering back through the bright purple door frame. 

Wait, purple door frame? 

The Meat Man falls through the door, as if the other side were an empty void, emitting an ear-splitting roar as it falls down, down, down. The door swings shut on its own with a soft click, and then swings back open. Tim can’t put words to what he sees, the ever-changing colors, the spinning patterns, the endless swirling spirals that invade the back of his mind until he finally looks away. But he CAN put a name to it. 

“Helen?” he asks, and she (he thinks that’s right) laughs, that empty haunting thing that reminds him of the last wanker to entice him with a brightly colored door. 

“Hello, Archivist,” she responds brightly. “Or, I suppose, Archivist’s assistant.” Yeah, no, that fucker was still in there somewhere. “Lovely day for some hunting, isn’t it?” 

He stares down at the sword in his hand, at the urge to swing building in his gut as he drops it to the ground, letting it rest among the glass. No, it was not a lovely day for some hunting. It was a lovely day for a  _ slaughter _ . He made a mental note to not let anyone else fix Jon’s office until that thing was back behind glass where it belonged. 

“I don’t know if I should say thank you or ask for the bill,” he finally says, panting and out of breath as the adrenaline begins to wear off. He tries to look at Helen again, very nearly gives himself an instant migraine, and settles on staring at the hinges of her bright purple door. 

“Am I not allowed to have hobbies?” she laughs again, sickly and wrong, and then sighs. “No, I’m afraid it was simply a case of dear Jared being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or the right place at the right time. Depends on you how you look at it.” 

“Right. What did he- oh shit, forget about that, move the door, I need to check on Melanie.” At this point, answers would always be more convoluted than they were worth, especially from the literal incarnation of lies. He needed to make sure all his people were safe. But Helen made no attempt to move, no attempt to close that awful door. 

“How rude. I save your lives and now you’re giving me orders? You’re lucky The Archivist likes you.” Tim said nothing, knowing that now was  **really** not the time to explain his complicated relationship with his boss. “Give him my regards. And make sure he’s aware just how much I’ve helped you.” The last sentence is very clearly a threat, despite her cheery tone. She laughs one more time and Tim’s vision clears, the doorway now looking across the hall into the destroyed archive assistants’ office. 

He took one cautious step across the threshold, stepping carefully just in case Helen changed her mind and tried to swap the doors at the last moment. You could never trust these avatars, they were always some sort of crooked. But the floor held, and he rushed through the hallway, now quiet save for the sound of Rosie yelling at someone over the phone, telling them to get here IMMEDIATELY. 

Melanie was still lying where she had fallen, hair covering her face, limbs splayed out like a ragdoll. Tim checked her pulse before anything else, exhaling a sigh of relief as it came though, steady and even. A hand reached up, grabbing his wrist before he could pull it back, causing him to panic before he realized that it was just Melanie coming back to consciousness. She moved the hair from her face, now somehow clear save from a few spots of dust, and he helped her lean back against the wall. 

“Kill it, kill it, kill it,” she whispered like a mantra under her breath. “Kill, kill, kill.” 

“Mel, we’re okay. It’s gone. The thing’s gone.” She looks up, a strange cloudiness clearing from her eyes as she finally focuses on him. She tilts her head and pulls the sleeve of her sweater over her thumb, using it to wipe his cheek. It’s soaked with red when she pulls it away, frowning at it. 

“How come I’m the only one who ever gets hurt in this fucking place?” she asks with a sigh, and then a pained gasp as she tries to sit up fully, hand pressing to her ribs. “Shit. Can you call Georgie and tell her I’m gonna have to go to the hospital? If I call her like this she’s gonna have a fit.” 

“You want me to call her  _ now? _ ” 

“Yeah, when else?” She looks at him with that withering, incredulous look that she was so good at, and he just sighs, getting up and looking around the wreckage of the office before pulling the phone out of his pocket. 

“Just use-” Melanie starts, before realizing that her phone was lost somewhere in the mess. It’d take hours of searching to find it, and if Rosie had anything to say about it, the paramedics would be there in less than 20 minutes. “Ugh, fine.” She gives him Georgie’s number, only waffling on the last digit for a moment. 

“Aw, you have it memorized,” Tim teases, and she gives a pained exhale that would have been a laugh in better circumstances. 

“Fuck you,” she smiles, as the call connects with a bright beep. 

“Hello, this is Georgie!” she answered, in that blandly positive tone of voice that anyone who’s worked in customer service can invoke like a poltergeist. 

“Hi Georgie, this is Tim. I um,” he looks at Melanie for guidance and she mouths the word ‘coworker’. “I work with Melanie.” 

“Oh, Tim. Right. Is Melanie...okay?” she’s suspicious, and has every right to be. This is probably one of the weirdest phone calls he’s ever had to make. 

“Yeah, she’ll be fine,” he looks for confirmation again, and Melanie shoots him a thumbs-up. “We just had a little incident at work. She’s headed to the hospital now.” 

“THE HOSPITAL!?” the shout nearly blows his ear out, even over the receiver. “Oh, sorry sweetheart,” she mutters quietly afterwards, and there’s the sound of a meow very close to the mic. “Why is she going to the hospital?” 

“Sometimes these things just happen at our job,” he says, shrugging at the unfortunate truth of the statement. “I-oh, there’s the ambulance now. I’ll have them call you, okay?” he lies quickly, moving the phone incrementally further from his face until finally hanging up. Melanie lets out the breath she’s been holding and then cringes again. 

“I’m quitting this job, I swear,” she groans, rolling her eyes. “I don’t care if I have to live in a box by the river, anything is better than this bullshit.” 

“I’ve got some unfortunate news for you,” he deadpans, and she squints her eyes, gears turning in her head as she tries to figure it out. When she finally does she hangs her head and huffs before slamming it backward into the wall. “Whoa, hey!” he says, moving to stop her from doing it again, but she holds up a hand, shaking, as if to say “it’s fine, I won’t.” 

“I hate this place. I  **hate** it here,” she hisses, a tear streaking down her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> am i implying that jon's ancestor was the avatar of the slaughter that stopped the previous unknowing? perhaps. did i just want tim to swing a big sword at Known Micro-aggressor jared hopworth? very much so, yes. 
> 
> also, we allow no melanie slander here, she is such a bitch and i love her SO MUCH for it


	6. ch.6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim visits the hospital one last time

“Big, angry man made of meat?” NotJon asks, and Tim nods. “And you’re saying you and Melanie defeated it? With a kitchen knife and my great-grandfather’s sword, which you have now come to believe is haunted by some sort of war ghost.”

“Yes.”

“And Helen was there and spirited the thing away for nothing more than future considerations?”

“Yeah.” 

“What the fuck.” Tim laughs, and NotJon crosses his arms over his chest and frowns. 

“It still doesn’t feel right to hear you curse.” 

“My vocabulary is the least of our problems. You do realize that that entire story is insane, right?” He gestures wildly with one hand, the other clamped around his mug so hard that his knuckles were beginning to pale. “You, with no training whatsoever, and  _ Melanie _ , whose previous job was as a glorified horror podcaster, took down a fully realized Avatar of The Flesh with the same knife I used to use for my morning bagel.” 

“I think you’re understating the importance of the haunted sword,” Tim counters, and he can practically see new stress greys appear in NotJon’s already quite salt and pepper hair. “Also, that was a LOT of words that mean absolutely nothing to me.” 

“Tim, that talwar belonged to my mother’s grandfather's grandfather, it’s been in my family since...” he thought for a moment, becoming very still. “Since the late 18th century. And it would have been in vaguely the same area...” he continues to ponder, leaving Tim to sit there, utterly lost, as he processes all his calculations. 

“So you’re saying it’s not haunted,” he finally asks, and NotJon looks at him as if he’s just asked what color the sky is. 

“No, it’s definitely... _ haunted _ , if we must use that word. I believe it might be an artefact of The Slaughter. Used by the avatar that stopped the previous Unknowing.” 

“Okay, can we start over from the beginning?” Tim finally breaks, holding up a hand in the universal gesture of ‘you just said some wild shit, please explain’. “I don’t have weird knowing powers, I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.” 

NotJon pulled an annoyed face, and then sighed, taking a sip from his mug before answering. 

“Alright, so. The Entities.” 

“The head honcho spooky boys.”

“Every day you come up with some new and inventive way to annoy me. But regardless, Smirke’s 14 ARE the Entities. The Slaughter, the Flesh, the Spiral, the Hunt-”

“The Web, The Eye, etcetera,” Tim confirms, “I’ve read Smirke’s books on architecture, I’m familiar.” NotJon seems pleasantly surprised, even cracking a proud smile at him as he continues. “I understand that part. What I don’t understand is how some weird culty religious undertones can lead to...Meat Man.”

“You called Hopworth  _ Meat Man _ ? Oh please tell me you actually said that to his face.”

“I dunno, maybe? It’s all a little blurry.” 

“Let’s hope we never have to ask him. Anyway, Smirke’s 14 aren’t just some cult concept about fears, the fears are  _ real _ . Incredibly real. Avatars, insomuch as we can call them that, gain powers from feeding them. So Daisy is...was...Daisy fed The Hunt. Elias and I both have gifts given by The Eye.” He taps his temple to illustrate the point.

“So it’s like having a patron saint of terror. That makes sense.”

“And so Hopworth, an avatar of The Flesh, could really only be defeated by another avatar.” NotJon points into the air, as if at some imaginary conclusion written on a whiteboard. “Or, it seems in this case, by two perfectly normal people under the influence of an artefact of The Slaughter.” 

“It doesn’t bother you?” Tim asks, after taking a moment to accept that his life was, in fact, bullshit. And that of course the world was simply a feedbag meant for eldritch fear demons who gave out superpowers like candy to their favored little miscreants.

“Which aspect?”

“The fact that one of your ancestors had a weird sword literally connected to something called ‘The Slaughter’.” 

“Well if I’m looking at the timeline correctly, that ancestor would actually have been a full-on avatar,” NotJon admits, with a shrug. “I’m more concerned about the fact that I  _ definitely  _ remember cutting my hand on that blade at one point as a child. I couldn’t have been more than 10. So. That may or may not come back to haunt me.” 

The dreamscape grows silent for a moment as Tim gives NotJon an appraising look, and then leans forward, resting an arm on the table to prop his head up on. 

“I know you’re just a figment of my imagination, but you are  _ incredibly _ calm about all this.” NotJon, who remains insistent that he is very much the ‘real’ Jon, shrugs again. 

“It’s very easy to be calm about things when you can do nothing to change them. Also, I’ve been stuck with you for more than three months now, I know how to talk to you. If you asked me to explain this to anyone else it would be a huge mess.” There’s another pause, as they both sit with that statement, until Jon clears his throat, obviously eager to change the subject. 

“Where was-” his voice wavers, clicks off for just a moment, as if someone has muted him mid-word, and then returns, “-during all this?”

“Huh?” Tim asks, confused. Jon opens his mouth to repeat the word. It starts with either M or N, he’s sure of it. 

“M-”

  
  


Tim’s phone rang as he was coming back to his desk with a fresh cup of coffee, a chiptune version of “Kokomo” by The Muppets echoing around the newly reconstructed office. He normally didn’t answer calls at work, but oh well. He was still on his break, technically. 

He doesn’t even get the receiver all the way to his ear before Amanika, his favorite of all Jon’s numerous nurses, the American, is excitedly babbling in rapidfire clip at him. 

“What? I don’t-”

“He’s awake.”

Tim takes the rest of the day off work, not even attempting to inform anyone as he grabs his bag and his jacket and hops straight into an uber to the hospital. His heart is beating a mile a minute in his chest. Amanika is outside waiting for him when he arrives, and she escorts him speedily past a swath of swarming doctors and their assistants, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Jon had had another visitor, she said, and then just like that, five minutes later all his vitals had gone blank. They were STILL blank, depending on who you asked, but he was awake and talking, and oh, she says dreamily, the first thing he did was ask for you. 

He opens the door to a crowded room, filled with more people in white coats all crowded around one very gaunt, very tired-looking man in a hospital bed. 

“OUT! NOW!” Amanika screams, using all her perceived American bravado and bad manners to get the doctors to scatter like rats, parading out the door with bewildered looks on their faces. She was the last one to leave, giving him a pat on the shoulder as the door clicked shut. 

Jon was sitting cross legged on top of the sheets, ill fitting hospital gown nearly dwarfing him as he dropped his arms from an above the head stretch. They stared at each other for a moment, as if not believing the other was truly real, before Tim finally found his feet, sitting down in his chair at Jon’s bedside. The beleaguered Archivist looked over at him and smiled, nodding his head toward the stack of statements on the bedside table, topped off with a tape recorder that Tim had very much not brought, but knew he would have to take credit for. 

“I assume these were from you.” 

“They were, yeah. Thought you might like a couple bedtime stories.” Jon laughs, albeit with a bit of a croak. Tim couldn’t blame him too much though. If he had gone three and a half months without speaking he was sure he’d sound a bit froggy too. 

“It was a very nice gesture, thank you,” Jon says, still smiling. Then he gets very serious, looking at Tim with an apprehension clearly foreign to him. “Do you remember-” 

“I don’t,” he replies, truthfully. “But I know.” 

“You...know?”

“You talk to me in my sleep. That’s why I don’t dream anymore,” Tim explains, and Jon’s shoulders drop in relief. 

“I’ll take that. Better than I was hoping for, anyway.” He sighs and glances out the window, at the bright noon sun and the expansive blue sky. “It wasn’t on purpose, by the way. God forbid you think that I specifically chose to torture you. Side effect of the coma, I think. Probably won’t happen again.” Tim notes that ‘probably’ and nods, finding himself unable to give Jon the piece of his mind that he’d been saving for him ever since he first put him in that ambulance. Stupid martyr bastard. Stupid, arrogant, self-serving, uncaring, know-it-all martyr bastard. 

“It’s fine. Pretty sure it’s stopped me from having awful PTSD nightmares, or whatever else. So, we’re even.” Jon looks at him and smiles again, all warmth, the laugh lines around his eyes crinkling. “What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know. I have to go back to work eventually,” he says, as if that’s an obvious fact. After a moment of thought, the employees get ill when they try to quit, he’d hate to see what happens to the first Archivist to try it. “More immediately? I’m not sure. I’ve been evicted. Obviously; I haven’t paid rent in months. I have nothing to my name except a soot-covered cardigan and my worst pair of pants, so I’m...in a bind.” He frowns and looks to Tim for his opinion. “Do you think Martin would let me stay with him? Just for a bit.”

“Who’s Martin?” Tim asks, feeling somewhat slighted. As far as he was aware, he was the only one that had ever visited Jon. The only person to even care about the  _ person _ in 2613 and not just the medical marvel. And now here he was, with another name all primed and ready to go the second he got better. “No, you’re staying with me, don’t be stupid.” 

Jon’s expression underwent about six changes in as many seconds before finally settling on a melancholy stare, eyebrows knitted in confusion. 

“You don’t remember Martin? Martin Blackwood?” he asks, and Tim shakes his head, crossing his arms over his chest with a huff. 

“No, I don’t. If that’s your boyfriend’s name, I’m sorry to say, but he dumped you months ago. Nobody’s been to see you except for me and Georgie. ONCE.” Jon shook his head again, like he was a teacher grading a very obviously wrong answer. Then, his expression crossed the border into pure confusion. 

“Wait, did you just say that I was going to stay with  _ you _ ?” 

“Yeah. You don’t have to seem so upset about it, christ.” 

“No, I...” Jon seemingly realized that he was being rude, clearing his throat and sitting straighter upright. “Have you somehow forgotten that you hate me?” 

“I don’t hate you,” Tim replied, rolling his eyes. “We’ve had...problems. In the past. But if helping save the world doesn’t count towards at least a few points off that debt, then what was the fucking point of it all?”

“Right. Alright. Thank you, Tim, really.” He looks like he’s struggling to understand, but Tim just waves the thought away. 

“It’s not a problem. As long as you throw in for groceries occasionally then it’ll be fine. Now, have they actually said when they’re going to discharge you?” 

“They said that I’m technically free to leave, but...” he trailed off, obviously talking about the cadre of doctors probably waiting outside the door. 

“I’ll go get Amanika, then,” Tim sighed, getting up from his chair and making his way toward the door. “Get your clothes on and let’s go.”

“My clothes?”

“You’re not gonna walk out in the gown, are you? On second thought, please do, that would be hilarious.” Jon scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. “Kidding, kidding. They’re in the second drawer.” Tim turned to leave again before stopping in his tracks, amazed that he had made it that far into the conversation without mentioning it. “Oh, and I have a new pair of glasses for you.”

He fished the case out of his bag and handed it to Jon, who promptly opened it. Inside was a brand new pair of glasses, shiny and new and exactly the same prescription as the old ones. He’d managed to get the information from the numbers printed on the one remaining arm and ordered them online. They were a bit bigger than the old ones, but still the same wire frames, this time connected by one of those old librarian chains. Tim had thought it was funny, but the look of genuine glee in Jon’s eyes as he puts them on makes him think that perhaps he’d been accidentally sincere. 

“Oh, you’re so much clearer now. I’d forgotten what being blind was like,” he says, looking at Tim much more closely now. His gaze travels down to his shirt pocket, to what is very surely the spiderwebbed lense of his old glasses poking out from the grey fabric. Tim turns quickly, hurrying to the door in what is very much not a nonchalant manner. 

“I’ll get the nurse. You’ve got five minutes,” he says, not looking behind him as the door automatically closes itself despite his attempt to slam it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had to do a lot of math for this.


	7. ch.7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Jon come home

Jon had bitched the entire way home. Not complained, not argued, no. Full-on one-sided, no room for argument  _ bitched _ for a solid hour after they had finally left the hospital. 

The tube was too crowded. The sun was too bright. His belt had become too large over his stay in the hospital, and now it was just weighing his pants down. That particular issue was worth 15 full minutes of Tim’s ever-dwindling life that he would never get back, as they finally made their way to the door of his flat. 

“I just don’t...what?” Jon asks as Tim looks down at him, too large borrowed hoodie and shitty fucking attitude making him seem almost like a bratty toddler, if not for the grey streaks marking his hair. 

“I know you just got your voice back, but will you  _ please _ shut the fuck up?” Jon huffs, and his nose turns up into that prissy snear, but he says nothing. Tim opens the door, tossing his keys onto the counter and hitting the light switch. He hadn’t had time to clean up, so the flat was a bit messier than he would have liked. There were dishes in the sink, papers sitting in a heap on the coffee table, and he just knew that the bathroom mirror had those little spots of toothpaste all over it. To his surprise, Jon walked past him into the living room with a look of open surprise on his face. 

“What?” Tim asks, and Jon seems to snap out of it, turning to give him a look over the top of his glasses. 

“I’m ‘shutting the fuck up’, just like you asked,” he drawls, with a set of exaggerated finger quotes that make Tim roll his eyes. 

“C’mon, don’t be like that.” 

“It’s...nice. Your flat, I mean.” He takes a seat on the arm of the sofa, gesturing vaguely around the room. 

“I’m offended that you expected it to be anything less,” Tim jokes, setting Jon’s old glasses next to his keys and hoping that he doesn’t notice. But, of course, he does, averting his eyes when Tim turns back to him. He doesn’t say anything about it, whether from confusion or cowardice, so Tim clears his throat and continues, “I wish I had a spare bedroom for you, but the couch is at least comfy. I’ve fallen asleep on it plenty of times. And I have a bunch of blankets, so you won’t have to worry about the cold.” 

Jon remains silent, just looking at him with that blank stare on his face, so he continues, desperate to try to fill the silence with  _ something _ . 

“There’s a toothbrush for you in the medicine cabinet. Food’s in the fridge, pans are under the counter and dishes are in the top left cabinet.” He pointed at all the various points, and still Jon stared at him. “Um. There’s chai concentrate in the mug cabinet?” He phrases it like a question, and that’s what finally gets to his silent observer, who blinks and tilts his head. 

“You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?” Jon asks, and now it’s Tim’s turn to be shocked silent. In all reality, he was convinced he hadn’t. It was just stuff. He’d been out shopping and picked it up. Just in case. Just in case he decided to take home his mortal enemy, the man he’d been convinced had ruined his life. The very same one he’d been visiting in the hospital every single day for nearly 4 months. Goddamnit. 

“Who else  _ was _ there?” he responds, and immediately feels guilty as Jon’s face drops. “Fuck, I didn’t mean it like...I didn’t mean that, Jon.” 

“But it’s true, isn’t it? You were the only person to care about me until the very end.” He laughs, but it’s empty, rotted from the inside by his own unwavering sadness. “Not even Martin stayed with me.” 

Tim felt bad for him, he really did. It must be really hard to wake up from a coma and find yourself dumped unceremoniously by the person that was supposed to love you in sickness and in health. It was clear that Jon had really loved this ‘Martin’ too, his voice cracking on his name as if even the syllables themselves were some broken sort of divine. And now, for whatever reason, he was gone. That must really suck. 

Not that Tim had any earthly clue what to do about it. He was barely able to process his own trauma without losing his fucking mind; suicide mission to stop The Unknowing notwithstanding. What was he supposed to do? 

“What do you want for dinner?” he finally blurts out, and Jon looks up at him, confused. “You haven’t eaten in months, right? What do you want your first meal back to be?” He pauses for a moment, seeming to think it over.

“My doctors would probably have an aneurism if they knew, but could we get some takeaway? I’ve been craving something savory for hours.” 

“So pretentious. Just say you want junk food like the rest of us,” Tim laughs, and Jon rolls his eyes so hard that the sound almost becomes audible. “But sure. There’s a place that does fantastic Chinese food a couple streets over. I’ll give them a call.” 

  
  


The food arrived only 30 minutes after he called to order, lava-hot, with two extra egg rolls and a little thank you note in the bag. As a single man with the world’s worst concept of personal health, Tim had definitely been one of their best customers and they had always treated him well. 

He left Jon on the couch to rifle through the bag and divide the containers, and went to the kitchen to quickly grab some drinks. For himself, he simply grabbed a bottle of Sapporo from the fridge. It opened with a hiss as he popped the bottle cap into the trash can with the edge of the counter. He then set the premade chai to boil with some water, taking a sip of his own drink and wincing at the carbonation. He poured the tea into Jon’s mug and sat the pot on top of some plates in the sink to be cleaned later, giving it a suspicious sidelong glance as the pile wobbled when he turned to leave. 

Tim returns to the couch, setting Jon’s tea on the coaster in the corner of the table. He looks for another for his own drink, realizes he only has the one, and sets the bottle between his knees with a sigh, holding it in place so that it doesn’t spill. He’d have to pick up more coasters on his way home from work. 

Jon gives him a muttered ‘thank you’ before taking his mug, sipping the tea with a contented sigh. Tim cracks open the white styrofoam container in front of him and digs into his chicken teriyaki. He’s starving, hasn’t had anything to eat since the poptart he’d demolished on his break, right before he’d gotten the nurse’s call. It’s strange, he thinks, taking a sip of his beer and giving Jon a once-over from the corner of his eye, how just 6 hours ago he was sure this man was dead. That he would lay comatose forever, like Sleeping Beauty in her glass casket. 

But now here he was, sitting on Tim’s couch absolutely attacking a container of vegetable chow mein like a man possessed, but  _ alive.  _

Jon looks over at him, noodles hanging from his mouth, mid-bite, and raises a questioning eyebrow. It’s so hilarious of a departure from his usual “god’s gift to mankind” high and mighty act that Tim can’t help but chuckle, folding into himself as his shoulders shake with laughter. He can’t help it, the laughter becoming all-encompassing as it progresses to that silent, choking kind that always makes his face hurt. Jon looks none too happy, but continues to eat until Tim finally pulls himself out of the laughing fit. His ribs pulse, protesting at him as he catches his breath and takes another sip of his beer. 

“Rude,” Jon finally objects, with a pointed glare. 

“Sorry. Seeing your posh little face make that stupid expression threw me,” Tim apologizes, which just seems to make him angrier, crossing his arms over his chest and turning to face him so quickly that the chain on his glasses sways back and forth. 

“I do  **not** have a ‘posh face’. The accent I can understand, but that is where I draw the line. Absolutely the  _ fuck _ not,” he squabbles, adding so much emphasis on the swear that it almost becomes its own sentence. Tim feels another laugh get stuck in his chest as he tries desperately to be serious. 

“Excuse me, the swearing?”

“I swear all the time!” Jon exclaims, now fully indignant as he gives Tim a pained look. “All. The. Time. We’ve had...” he trails off, as he realizes. “Well, I suppose we haven’t had this conversation before, have we? Not for you?” 

“No. I suppose not,” Tim agrees, remaining laughter dying in his chest as he looks at the heartbroken expression on Jon’s face. “I...I’m sorry.” 

“It’s not your fault,” he answers, letting his arms drop to his lap before reaching for his mug. He holds it in both hands, covering the “World’s Okayest Boss” print that Tim had thought was a nice, ironically funny choice. They both sit there for another moment, the silence cutting like a knife. 

“What’s he like?” Tim asks, and Jon shoots him a fearful glance. “The me I am in my dreams, I mean. The me I am when I’m sleeping? Dream me. None of those sound right,” he stutters on, unable to put together a proper sentence for some reason as his heart hammers in his chest. 

“He’s just you. I thought...I dunno. I used to think you two would be different. You were always so nice to me. Still an asshole, obviously, since that seems to be an integral part of your personality,” he snarks, and Tim can’t help but smirk. He returns it, a full smile, continuing, “But pretty much the same. I couldn’t for the life of me convince you that I was  _ actually _ me, so just as stubborn too.” 

“In my defense, speaking to trauma ghosts is a lot easier of an explanation to believe than my flatlined boss astrally projecting from his coma directly into my unconscious brain.” 

“When you put it like that it sounds so much worse.” 

“It’s bad any way you slice it,” Tim reasons, between a bite of Chinese. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad I’m not a different person when I’m not, y’know,  _ awake _ . I didn’t have like, blue hair or anything, did I?” 

“No,” Jon snorts, “No, you looked the same, too. Tall and ginger and that same horrible fashion sense.” 

“Horrible fashion sense? I’ll have you know, my fashion sense is  _ very  _ good, thank you,” Tim responds, with a lighthearted pluck to the shoulder of his hoodie, which Jon still has on over his singed t-shirt. The cardigan had fallen apart at some point in the hospital drawer, which had been another point of bitchery on the way home. “And I’m actually surprised I didn’t mess around with my hair. I always used to make jokes about bleaching it some awful color on a whim and...anyway, someone always talked me out of it. Thought I might have gone through with it for my non-corporeal self.” 

He can’t see their face. He remembers the conversations, him threatening to turn his dark auburn hair bright green or some other awful color, and someone would always talk him out of it. It wasn’t Sasha, he knew that much. The blank in his memory was taller than her. He thinks it was taller than her. And had...glasses? Maybe? Who the fuck was in this memory? 

“No, still the exact same,” Jon’s voice cuts through his meandering thoughts, bringing him back to the moment. There’s something about his expression that Tim just can’t place, some sort of hidden melancholy just behind his dark eyes. “I’m not even sure if people  _ can _ change their dream forms. I certainly can’t, I know that much. I thought you were going to have a stroke when I saw you that first night. You wouldn’t even talk to me, just sat there looking at the cut on my face.” 

“I’d forgotten about that,” Tim says, and without thinking, reaches up and gently brushes back a lock of Jon’s hair to look at it. It’s still that same dull grey, well healed, reaching all the way back to his temple, and...it’s then that Tim realizes exactly what he’s doing. He’s essentially just invaded Jon’s personal space, in the worst possible way. “Sorry, I guess I’m still used to you being...yeah. Sorry.” His hand practically shoots back down into his lap, knocking his beer to the floor where it begins spilling all over the hardwood. He throws the napkins from the takeaway bag at the puddle hastily, with an angry vocalization that’s more an aggravated growl than any human word. Jon puts a hand gently on his shoulder, still warm from his tea, and Tim pauses to look at him. 

“It’s fine,” he reassures, “Really, it is.” 

“It’s not fine. Boundaries are-”

“So it’s not fine, then. I forgive you,” he says, giving the logic a moment to fit together in Tim’s head. “You should get some sleep,” he says, changing the subject and moving his hand back into his own lap, resting it, once more, on the outside of his mug. “I can clean everything up, but you...you look very tired.” 

Tim  **was** very tired. Jon had been the patient, sure, but he was abrasive in all the wrong ways. You couldn’t passive-aggressive your way through several hundred pieces of medical red tape and paperwork. But you  _ could _ literally just force your way out the door, giving anyone that tried to stop you a healthy ‘fuck you, move’, and so he had been the pointman on their escape from the hospital. It had been...a lot. And the seeping exhaustion seemed to be making him childishly cranky. So yes, he was, in fact, ready for bed. 

“I...yeah,” he finally agreed. He stood up, taking a moment to stretch, and looked back down at Jon, still watching him from the couch. “Blankets are in the closet. I don’t have cable, but there’s Netflix on the PS4 if you know how to use one of those.” 

“Of course I know how to use the PS4,” Jon replies, as if it’s a personal slight to believe he couldn’t. Tim notes that he mirrored his phrasing of “the PS4” and not “a PS4”, coming to the quick conclusion, that, in fact, Jon had no fucking clue what he was talking about. He just smiled, giving him a knowing look. 

“Alright, you win. Gamer boy Jon knows all about how to use a console.” He tried to keep his tone even after Jon pulled a face at the word ‘console’. “I’ve got work at 9, do you want me to wake you up before I leave?” 

“Yes, please,” Jon mutters, taking another sip of his tea. “Goodnight, Tim.” 

“Goodnight, Jon.” 

It takes Tim less than twenty minutes to get fully ready for bed, but by the time he looks into the living room from the door to his room the lights are already turned off. The leftovers are gone from the table, which has been cleared with admirable efficiency. He listens, and smiles when he hears the hint of a snore pass up over the top of the couch. He lays down in bed and falls asleep within the hour. For once, he does not dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, jolting upright from a dead sleep, in a cold sweat, at 8pm: goddamnit they're english, it's a /flat/ not an apartment  
> so yeah, pls forgive the temporary american-ness, i fixed it for this chapter and going forward


	8. ch.8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Jon find Martin (sorta)

Tim got ready the same way he did every morning, which was grumpily. The sun had shined in through the window again, accosting him just as his alarm had gone off; the perfect combo of absolute bullshit. He took his shower and changed into his clothes for work, wondering if he should even go in at all. No, he eventually decided, he had to go in. He had to tell...the thought dies before it can really set in, and instead he remembers just how sick he’d gotten the last time he tried to quit. No way was he going through that again. 

Jon is still snoring on the couch when he walks in, duvet cover and three blankets drawn up over his head. Tim makes a note to get maintenance to take a look at his radiators. The cold had never bothered him, since he ran hotter than most people, and it had never been an issue. But if Jon was going to be staying with him, it was a problem that would need to be fixed. 

He quietly steps into the kitchen, keeping his movements as low-impact as possible as he heated up Jon’s morning cup of chai. He didn’t have time to brew coffee for himself, he was already running late, so he’d just pick one up on his way to work. He opens the cabinet to find a mug and comes face to face with a cabinet full of clean dishes, all dried and stacked neatly in their places. Jon must have done the dishes before he went to bed. Tim smiles and takes down his mug, filling it with tea and leaving a little space at the top so that it doesn’t spill. He rinses the pot, and only then does he hear stirring from the other room.

“Tim?” Jon’s scratchy morning voice called out, and a second later there was a shuffling of socked feet as Tim placed the pot upside down in the dish rack. He turned, mug in hand, to Jon who had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and was rubbing the sleep from his eyes like it owed him money. He reached out his hands gratefully for the tea as Tim handed it to him. “Thanks.” 

“No problem,” Tim smiles, and then suddenly catches himself. He stares at Jon, who he would have thrown off a beltway overpass with no regrets not half a year ago, who is now having a sleepy sip of tea that TIM had made, in HIS flat, with HIS blanket around him. And he didn’t hate it. How had the wires gotten so crossed in his head? 

“Do you think I could borrow the keys?” Jon asks, eyes still half-lidded from fatigue. Tim hands it to him off the counter without question, then takes the broken pair of glasses beside them and drops it into his shirt pocket. Jon raises an eyebrow at him, but says nothing about it, clearing his throat and continuing, “I need to go out and get new clothes. I’ve only got the one shirt, and-”

“It’s fine, Jon,” Tim reassures. “I figured you’d ask at some point. Just...you know...make sure to lock up well. If my flat gets burgled I will be taking it out on you, specifically.” He points an accusatory finger at Jon, but the man just laughs, nodding his head. “I’m serious. Getting us burgled is a punishable offense.”

“Yes, alright. I take full responsibility.” He looks over Tim’s outfit and frowns slightly, glancing at the door. “Are you headed to work?” 

“Yep. Don’t worry, Elias is in prison now, so-” 

“I’m sorry, he’s WHAT?” Jon asks, snapping to attention. “He’s in JAIL?” 

“Well yeah. He killed Gertrude. And brutally pipe-murdered Leitner. Of course he’s in jail. He...uhhhh...for fuck’s sake!” Tim finally snapped, screwing his eyes shut in frustration as he searched for the person he was trying to remember. It was right there, right on the tip of his tongue. M something. Martha. Marsha. Marwin. When he opened his eyes Jon was giving him that look again, that oh so pitying one that he hated with every fiber of his being. “Someone found the evidence and snitched on him! I don’t remember who, but it was someone in the archive. Melanie! M, so Melanie.” He calms down, though something tells him what he’s just said isn’t quite right. “He’s awaiting trial, but under the special section 31 laws...I doubt he’s ever getting in front of a jury. Figure he’ll just sit there and rot.”   


“Right,” Jon says, for whatever reason suddenly unable to make eye-contact. “Well, as long as you’re...safe.” 

“I will be, don’t worry. It’s been weeks since the last incident.” He tries to give Jon a reassuring smile as they say their goodbyes, the lock clicking shut behind him as he made his way through the cold November air to the tube station. 

  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

He knocks on the front door and within a moment it snaps open, chained door just wide enough for a brown eye to poke through, staring at him for just a millisecond, before it smacks shut and reopens properly. 

Jon was dressed in his usual style now, an overly large dark green jumper and brown corduroys, but he was still wearing Tim’s hoodie with it. Weird fashion choice, but Tim doesn’t have the time nor the desire to dissect it. He was probably just cold. Calling maintenance sprang up several priority places on his checklist. 

“I’ll be done in just a moment, I was trying to get organized,” he says, gesturing behind him at the living room that was covered in various piles of clothing. Tim pulls the glasses from his pocket and puts them on the counter next to his keys that Jon had returned to their usual spot. He throws his wallet down next to it, not caring that it bounces open, and makes his way to the fridge to grab a drink. 

“That’s fine, as long as it doesn’t stay like that forever,” he shrugs, grabbing a beer and letting the fridge slam shut. He pops the top, tossing the cap into the trash, and only then does he turn back to a strangely silent Jon. He has Tim’s wallet in his hands, holding it as if it’s a delicate gem as he stares at the picture behind the plastic divider. “Hey, what the hell are you-” 

“Look at this,” Jon cuts him off, pulling the polaroid from the plastic, dropping the wallet back onto the counter. He turns the picture back at Tim, clearly hoping for a reaction that he won’t receive. 

“Jon, that’s MY wallet, I-” 

“ _ Please _ , Tim,” he begs, lip beginning to wobble as he looks at the picture again, smiling even as his eyes tear up. “Just look at it. Tell me what you see.” Tim sighs, taking a sip of beer as he acquiesced, staring intently at the picture as Jon turned it toward him. 

There he was. Good old self, to the left of the frame, making that dumb face for the camera. Hair rumpled and fucked up, as was usual for pub night. On the right was...oh, Sasha. That must be her, the real her. Short, with miles and miles of curly hair that almost took her over as she was caught, mid-laugh by the camera. God, wasn’t she beautiful? He missed her dearly. 

And then that bloke in the middle. Sasha’s arm was around him, so they must have known each other. He was kind of cute, actually, with wide eyes and glasses underneath a shock of blonde hair. What was Jon trying to get him to see? He didn’t understand. And then he sees the caption. 

“Son of a fucking bitch!” he exclaims, slamming his beer to the counter and snatching the thing out of Jon’s hands, bringing it within an inch of his eyes, as if that’s going to change what he’s seeing. The caption reads, in unfamiliar handwriting, ‘Martin’s First Pub Night :)’. Martin. Martin? MARTIN!

“You see him!” Jon exclaims, and as Tim looks up at him, he becomes confused by the look on his face. He looks as if he’s had some kind of breakthrough. His expression falls as Tim narrows his eyes, about to ask why he was so excited, when he remembered the photo in his hands. He looked down at it and immediately the knowledge of his breakthrough came back to him. 

“I think I have to keep looking at it,” Tim says, focusing very hard on whatever details he can in the photo, eager to not forget again. Sasha’s scrunchie was covered in a beer mug print. It was the same one he’d bought for her after she’d gotten a little too drunk and complained for an entire night about how her hair was sticking to her face. 

“Uh...hold on.” He continues to stare at the picture as he listens to Jon rifling through drawers, looking for something. When he finally finds it, he’s quiet for a few seconds, occasionally looking at the picture over Tim’s shoulder. Martin’s jumper is a green and yellow argyle, he notes. Very tasteful. 

“Are you-”

“Shut up!” Jon chides him, and he does, until the picture is finally snatched out of his hands. Jon hides it, image side down, against his chest, and looks at Tim suspiciously. “Alright. Pop quiz. What’s in this picture?” 

“Sasha and I,” he answers, and Jon nods, so he continues. “She is a...blonde? I’d say blonde, uhhh, woman. Really short straight hair. Really tall and skinny. And then I’m me. Maybe a little drunk, but same basic look.” 

“Okay, got Sasha completely wrong,” Jon says, sneaking a quick glance at the picture and spending just a moment too long looking at it, clearing his throat. “But that’s par for the course when it comes to Sasha these days...Wow, she was really...” 

“Yeah, she was. Can we get this over with? What are you asking me about?” 

“Who’s in the middle?” Huh. Now that  _ was _ a good question. 

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone is,” he says, somewhat convinced that this is a trick question, until Jon turns the picture again and after a moment, he sees the man in the center of the frame. “Martin? Is that-” 

Jon swaps the picture with a piece of printer paper that he’s drawn a quick pencil portrait on. It was surprisingly good, a 3/4 view of a man with big round glasses and big curly hair smiling widely at the viewer. Underneath he’d written the name ‘Martin Blackwood’ in his curt, messy handwriting. 

“Jon, this is fantastic. I didn’t know you could draw,” he says, trailing off when something in the back of his mind connects to the name. 

“I minored in fine art for the overlap classes,” he says, and then snaps his fingers in the air, causing Tim to look up at him. He nods, then says, “Alright, now tell me what’s on that paper. Don’t look, just tell me from your memory.” 

“It’s a portrait. Just the head. Guy with glasses and curly hair. Nice smile, pretty good-looking. I...I remember him, vaguely. Like I saw him one time, and that’s it.” He looks down at the picture again, the name worming its way into his brain. He takes the polaroid back from Jon, and things snap together in his head as he looks from the picture, to the drawing, to Jon and remembers. Not what it means, but at least he can keep the face, at least he can keep the name. “Oh holy shit. How did you just figure out it’d stay if it’s-”

“A copy? Some woman’s statement, she thought her mother was a doppelganger or something.” He waves a hand, as if the concept is ridiculous. “I just...I just  **knew** it would work.” 

“Well,” Tim says, handing him back the polaroid, feeling something pull in his chest as Jon holds it close, as if it’s going to be taken away from him. “I can ask someone at work, but we’ve been kind of useless for actually figuring anything out since Lukas took over.” 

“I...I’m sorry,” Jon asks, head shooting up from looking at the Polaroid to give him a horrified, wide-eyed look; “Did you just say  _ Lukas _ ? As in Peter Lukas?”

“Yeah-”

“Peter Lukas, as in, Captain of the Tundra: Peter Lukas? As in, heir to the Lukas family: Peter Lukas? As in, AVATAR OF THE FUCKING LONELY: Peter Lukas?”

“In my defense, I’ve never met the guy!” Tim argues, still holding the portrait Jon drew. He glances at it and suddenly two things connect in his mind. “Or his assistant. Oh my god, his assistant.” He looks over at Jon, who seems to be one sentence away from having a full-blown breakdown, stress chewing on the edge of his new jumper sleeve as he continues to stare at that picture. 

Tim doesn’t think about it, he leans forward, pulling him into a hug. Jon hesitates for a moment, tense against his chest, and then he feels shoulders drop, arms snake around him to clutch his shirt. 

“We’ll figure something out, alright? I promise.” And they would. No matter what it took, Timothy Stoker fulfilled his promises. Always. He didn’t intend to change that now. Jon just nodded into his jacket, and he looked at the drawing over his shoulder as he held him close. 

This was Martin. This was the man that Jon had mentioned right after waking up. Apparently he was better friends than the guy than Jon was. How the hell did that work? And why couldn’t he remember him? It was like there was a hard drive eradicated from his memory, strange chunks missing where there should have been footage. The more he thought about it, the more memories blinked out, his brain unable to run them back without being able to call up this Martin guy. 

That was unacceptable. And it was going to change, starting tomorrow morning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when my motivation crashes...then you will Realize...but for now, i'm just uploading chapters right after I edit them. sorry to anyone with notifications turned on for whatever reason, you will be receiving Many Emails for the time being. 
> 
> ALSO! thank you all for the lovely comments!! I get too nervous to respond to them individually, but reading them makes my heart feel very nice and cozy, so i do appreciate them!


	9. ch.9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Jon have a fight (a little one)

“Alright, help me with this list,” Tim motions to Jon as he comes out of the hallway from the bathroom, freshly washed hair tied back to keep it off his nice black wool jumper. “I’ve got green tea, Keats, and those crackly little French cookies.” 

“Macarons,” he corrected, leaning against the counter next to Tim so that both of them could look at the notebook they were slowly filling up with everything they could remember about Martin Blackwood. Which, at this point, wasn’t much. 

“Yeah, those. What else?” Jon makes a face, delving deep into his memories to look for anything he may have missed. If his brain were a computer, it would have overheated in the full minute of silence following that question. The room would be filled with black smoke and the motherboard would have caught on fire. “We can work on it later, alright?” 

Tim shut the little notebook, closing the elastic band and putting it into his pocket as he looked back at the oven timer that was telling him it really was time to get going. He didn’t care about being late, but with these new developments, he wanted the most possible time to test him and Jon’s theories in their best possible environment. Which, unfortunately, happened to be The Magnus Institute. 

“Right, we can work on it when we get to the office,” Jon nods, and Tim realizes he’s all dressed to go out. He had, though, for some reason, decided not to buy a new pair of shoes, and the ones he had on were still somewhat dusty. 

“I’m sorry, ‘we’?” 

“I’m coming back to work,” Jon says, as if that’s just something he can  _ do _ without them at least talking about it first. 

“No the fuck you are  _ not _ ,” Tim answers incredulously. Jon immediately goes on the defensive, crossing his arms and opening his mouth to argue. “End of discussion, point blank period.” 

“You let me go shopping, so you obviously understand that I am safe enough from whatever marauding evils are lurking-”

“Just because you  _ can _ run from them doesn’t mean you  _ should _ . You have to outrun them every single time, but that darkness only has to catch you  **once** ,” he emphasizes, gesturing angrily at the world outside their front door. “It’s just not safe for you to be cavorting around every day.” 

“It’s not ‘cavorting’, it’s going back to my job. The one that I am physically tied to, remember? If I don’t engage with the statements, if I don’t  _ feed  _ The Eye...” he trails off, and Tim remembers the wrenching pains from his last attempt at taking time off. He cringes, but shakes his head, standing firm in his decision. 

“No, Jon. It’s not happening. I’ll...I’ll raid the files and bring home some statements for you, alright?” He holds his hands up as Jon huffs, rolling his eyes and obviously holding back some acidic comment. “Alright, Jon?”

“You’re treating me like a child,” he answers, venomous. 

“I know. I’m sorry. But it’s for your own good.”

“Why do you get to decide what’s ‘good for me’? Am I not beholden to my own will? Am I not a fully realized person that gets to decide what to do with myself? Why is your word worth so much more than mine?” 

“Because I actually care about you, Jon! Is that so hard to fucking understand?” He can’t help but yell, so very tired of Jon trying to throw himself bodily at every goddamn problem he ever encountered. It was like he  _ wanted _ to die, or get kidnapped a-fucking-gain. “I don’t want you dying over some stupid whim! Or because you feel the need to ‘prove yourself’ for whatever godforsaken reason! You are very smart, and very interesting, and you don’t have to prove it by throwing yourself into the cosmic equivalent of moving traffic! Okay? That’s it. End of discussion.” 

He turns on his heel and leaves, slamming the door behind him. He waits for a moment, and then turns down the corridor with a sigh when he hears the lock click into place. He handled that badly. He knew he handled that badly. He’d have to apologize properly. 

Tim considered it all day, even as he kept an eye on the cup of tea he brewed and then set on his desk. He personally didn’t drink tea, but it was on the list of things Martin, whoever he may be, liked, so Tim kept it close enough to keep in his mind, hoping that it might pop some well-hidden memory bubble. It was a longshot, but Tim was too distracted to really put effort into it. He will do better tomorrow. Read some Keats out loud in the stacks, maybe. Yeah, that seemed like it might provoke some sort of memory response in his brain. He’d never been much of a fan, so if he found anything familiar it would jump right out at him. So now that was settled, one more thing added to his ever-growing list. Now he just had to figure out how to stop Jon from being mad at him. 

  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=

“Jon?” he called out as he shoved the door open, hinges sticky with frost. He received no response, but the angry eyes peeking over the top of a Murakami paperback at him betrayed exactly where his boss was; curled up under the stack of blankets on the couch. He meandered over, trying to be casual as he put a small bag on the coffee table and looped back, dropping his bag by the door on his way to the kitchen. “I’m cooking dinner tonight,” he explained, smirking when he heard the telltale rustling of craft paper behind him as he collected the ingredients from the fridge. “Is chicken alfredo alright?” 

“I’m a vegetarian,” came the answer, muffled, as if the person speaking had half a slice of Tiramisu shoved in their mouth. Tim had stopped by the bakery on the far side of the institute on his way home, the one he had seen boxes for frequently in the break room trash can. From there, it had just been a good guess that Jon was the culprit with the sweet tooth. And then a simple conversation with the owner, a nice little woman that was all too happy to get a serving of her ‘favorite customer’s’ usual order wrapped up to go.

“Just alfredo, then,” he confirmed, though he received no answer. He quickly boiled the pasta, throwing together a quick sauce to go with it. Tim enjoyed cooking, he really did. There was just something about creating and then immediately digging into the delicious fruits of your labor that just made him feel accomplished. He pulls down a set of those weirdly shaped deep plates, spooning them until they are nearly overfilled with pasta and good sauce. 

“Here, bon appetit.” He placed one of the plates on the table, and Jon sat up from his blanket cocoon, clearing space for Tim to sit next to him. He put his own plate down, blowing on it to cool it down before taking a big bite. They ate dinner in silence, not a single word said to the other. It was only when Tim got up to put the plates in the sink that Jon put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. 

“Are you still mad at me?” Tim asks, and Jon rolls his eyes and breaks into an exasperated grin. 

“You make it very difficult to be mad at you for long,” he admits. 

“I know. I’m much too charming to hold grudges against. I  _ am _ sorry though. You’re right, you’re a grown man, you can decide what you want to do for yourself.” That was something Tim was working on. He had a tendency to fall back on that “they can’t be mad forever” cushion, to use it to justify doing shitty things to people he cared about just because he knew he would be forgiven. It was time to cut back, and actually own up to all his rude bullshit. However... “That doesn’t mean I think it’s a good idea.” 

“I know that. And...I think you’re right. Somewhat.” Tim had to be hearing things. Hallucinating on some bad sauce. Jonathan Sims was admitting he was wrong? To him, of all people? Was the sky finally falling? “As long as you bring me statements every so often I  _ think _ I’ll be able to stay home without getting sick. I think so. We’ll have to see, and if I do get sick-” 

“If you get sick, then you’ll have to go back,” Tim agrees, nodding. “But until then, you should stay as safe as possible.” 

“Right. I agree.” Jon nodded, pausing and looking away before turning back to him, now sheepish and timid in his questioning. “And, hypothetically, if I wanted to use Netflix, how do I...manage that?” 

Tim laughed for a long time, much to Jon’s chagrin, and then dutifully explained how to sort through the PS4’s interface to get where he wanted. They settled on watching a Japanese slasher film after Tim finished washing the dishes, an old 2010 thing called Kuronezumi, Black Rat. It was, as advertised, a movie about a killer in a black rat mask, gory with just the perfect hint of self-awareness. He had leaned back against the couch halfway through, one arm over the back as he was utterly immersed in the movie. 

It was only at the very end, as the credits rolled, that Tim felt the weight on his chest. Jon had fallen asleep at some point, and slumped over, his head resting on Tim’s shoulder as he curled close, leaning against him to share his warmth. 

“Jon?” he asks, giving the sleeping man a gentle shake. He jolts awake, looking around to try and figure out where he is. “You fell asleep sitting up.” 

“Mhm,” is the only response, so Tim vacates his spot on the couch, carefully lowering Jon down after putting a pillow in his place. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Tim replies with a small, grateful smile as he shuts the lights off on his way to his own bedroom. He was glad Jon was feeling more comfortable in his flat. It was good to see him able to relax; for once, the weight of the world not weighing on him like Atlas and his burdens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a few sweeter chapters in the works before i have to rip my own heart out as i get ready to redo s4. my planning doc has little sad faces in it, that's what we're working with here. also. Real Human Time based plot points. i hate them with every fiber of my being. eclipse or w/e my fucking ass, im sending these bitches to nyalesund IMMEDIATELY. I will call upon the power of the "because i said so" retcon if i have to, but they are going asap


	10. ch.10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim helps Jon with his nightmares

The Keats was starting to drive him mad. It had been two weeks of reading it every day on his break now. He’d read just one poem aloud to himself in the break room before his usual noon coffee. But Keats wasn’t very good, at least in his opinion, and the asinine poems on nature and love were beginning to rot a hole in his brain. He sighs as he puts the book down on the table and rubs his eyes. 

Jon hadn’t been sleeping well. He’d never admit it, but Tim could hear him out in the living room sometimes, sobbing quietly in the middle of the night when he assumed his roommate was asleep. Hold on. Was Jon his  _ roommate _ now? They’d only lived together for a month, did that-

“Holy shit, I’ve lived with him for a full month,” Tim groans, shutting his eyes and leaning back in his chair as far as he dares without risking falling over. 

So, yes, Jon was technically his roommate. It made sense. It was a symbiotic relationship. He provided a place to stay and Jon provided protection from The Eye’s influence over his dreams. Apparently Melanie had been so freaked out by hers that she had moved into the little room in the back of file storage, saying that the outside world was ‘no longer safe’. Basira too, of all people, had set herself up a little camp behind the 1975 stacks, though she was only around every once in a blue moon to actually live in it. They must be suffering something awful to give up the comforts of the world to live in a musty old archive. So maybe he would keep Jon as his special anti-nightmare talisman. Was it selfish? Probably. Did he care? No, not in the slightest. 

Be it some strange sort of schadenfreude or just simple acceptance, he was glad to have Jon around, cries in the middle of the night be damned. He didn’t know what he was going to do once his recently revived boss finally found a flat of his own. He shudders, not even wanting to consider the possibility. When he moved away, who would watch over him? Who would make sure that whatever strange beasts and violent men paraded themselves into his life didn’t tear him apart for the glory of their Entity?

Tim was afraid. He could admit that to himself, at least. He was afraid because he  _ cared  _ about Jon. He wanted to see him happy, to see him not just survive, but thrive. They were... _friends_. He and Jon were friends, strange as that was to admit. And nothing about that would change as long as he just didn’t go back to work. 

That snaps Tim out of his reverie, and he checks the clock on the breakroom microwave. He’s wasted five entire minutes zoning out in the middle of the stanza. He groans, searching back through the dog-eared page to find his place. 

“Oh solitude, blah blah blah,” he skims over the words, “jumbled heap, vigils keep, oh here we are.” He clears his throat and finishes the last couplet, “Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, when to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.” He waits for his brain to offer up any sort of recognition, and sighs when it doesn’t. He marks the poem with a little x near the title. No recollection. 

When he looks back up at the table, his usual coffee mug is sitting in front of him, full. He looks suspiciously at the steam wafting up from the near pitch black surface for just a moment before reaching out and taking a sip. He must have gotten up and made it before he started reading and then just forgotten about it. Yeah, that was surely the explanation, especially because it was made just to his liking, with tons of sugar and absolutely zero milk. Nobody in their right mind would make coffee like that besides him, so it had to be his own doing. Right?

  
++++++++++++++++++++

It was 1:30 am, according to his alarm clock, though he didn’t even have to check at this point. He’s reading in bed, having said goodnight to Jon almost an hour previously, when he hears shuffling in the hall outside his room. He waits for the click of the bathroom door, as that’s the only thing in the hallway, and then frowns when the shuffling simply retreats back from his door. 

He’s done this three nights in a row now. Walked up to Tim’s door, waffled about knocking, and then exiled himself back to the living room. Well not tonight. Tim tosses the covers off and sets his book, one of Smirke’s longer treatises on the finer points of designing around cobwebs, on his bedside table. 

“Jon?” he calls, opening the door just enough to stick his head out and catch Jon sheepishly turning back to him like a cat with canary feathers in its teeth. “You alright?” 

“I’m fine,” he tries to explain, but Tim shoots him a skeptical look and he crumbles. “Dreams, again.” 

“Figured. You want to talk about it?” 

“No, no, I’m fine. You wouldn’t understand-”

“I’m just about the only person on this earth that might,” Tim cuts him off before he can say anything else. “And you keep coming to my door every night, so I think you know that.” Jon gave him an indignant ‘how dare you’ look, and then his eyes blinked to the side, the obvious tell that he was about to give in. Tim swings the door fully open and beckons him in exaggeratedly, like one of those game show models. It breaks the tension as Jon gives him an amused snort, filing past and sitting cross legged on the far corner of the bed. Tim does the same with the opposite corner, leaning against his padded headboard. 

“So...” he starts tentatively, clasping his hands together. “Welcome to sleep therapy. What seems to be troubling you?” Jon smiles at his awful rendition of a psychiatrist (unfortunately modelled after the absolutely abysmal one he’d seen after the Worms Incident) and shrugs. 

“Nightmares. Nothing I can really do about them.” He tries to keep it vague, but Tim shakes his head, making the ‘keep going’ hand motion. “Um. They’re  _ not _ actually nightmares, I suppose. For me. I just visit other people’s dreams.” 

“How’s that a nightmare? You lived in my head for like, 4 months,” Tim points out, and Jon gives him the most skeptical look possible. “Oh come on, I’m not that bad.”

“The inside of your brain feels like being stuck on an escalator. An escalator that sometimes yells at you,” he adds, and Tim struggles not to laugh. Jon’s expression immediately shifts from jovial to concerned, as he picks at the sleeve of his hoodie. Well, it was still technically Tim’s hoodie, but when Jon had bought his new clothes he just...hadn’t given it back for whatever reason. Tim didn’t care enough to call him out on it, so it stayed in his usual outfit rotation. “But with these new dreams it’s...different. I’m not speaking to them, I don’t get a chance to defend myself or explain that I mean them no harm. I’m in other people’s minds and I think...I think I’m hurting them,” he finally admits, looking to Tim as if pleading for a benediction he cannot receive. 

“That’s not true, you-” Tim tries to cut in, but Jon cuts him off, near manic now as he continues to rant. 

“You don’t  **see** them like I do, Tim. You don’t see how scared they are of me. Melanie, Basira, hundreds of others, all trapped in their own minds and terrified of me!”

“So stop doing it! Stop looking!”

“I can’t.” And ah, there’s the awful truth. Tim watches as Jon clenches his fists, tries to even his breathing. “I can’t stop looking. The statements you bring me only do so much to placate The Eye. It’s hungry, and it makes  _ me  _ hungry, and if I don’t look, if I don't watch, then...” The implication is clear. The Eye must be fed one way or another, or Jon would die. The very thought made Tim sick to his stomach as they sat there in anticipatory silence. 

“Sometimes...sometimes it’s okay to be a little morally grey, Jon,” he finally stutters, honestly a little uneasy with his own point. Was it really okay to give his tacit approval to this kind of thing? I mean, this was the exact kind of monstery bullshit that he would have called Jon out on. But now, after everything they’d been through? No, he refused to lose anyone else. If Jon had to feed on the suffering of others then they were just gonna have to deal with it. 

“You, of all people-” 

“I know, I know, me of all people. But I’m serious. Until we can figure something out, you’ll just...have to deal with it. I’m sorry.” Jon’s face falls, and he sighs deeply. 

“I don’t like it, you know. Don’t particularly enjoy being a monster.” 

“You’re not a monster,” Tim prefaces strongly, “We’re dealing with forces so wildly beyond our control that we may as well be ants trying to take down a Sherman. You’re just doing your best.” The joke is enough to cut through the melancholy miasma around Jon, and he gives Tim a half-hearted smile. “You understand?” 

“I understand. I don’t  _ agree _ , but I understand.” Better than nothing. Tim nods at him, relieved. Jon stands up and stretches, and then motions out the door towards the living room. “I’m going to see if I can get a few more hours.” 

“Do you want to sleep in my bed?” Tim doesn’t know why he says it. He doesn’t know why he phrases it like THAT either, as Jon’s eyes go wide with shock. “No, I- I didn’t- I mean like you sleep here and I’ll sleep on the couch. Jesus. Not that you’re not- I mean- I would, but now’s not-” The more he talks, the more he feels his face heat up with shame as he continues to fuck up the wording; until eventually he finally looks back to Jon who seems entirely too amused at his misfortune. “You sleep here. I sleep couch,” he finally manages, resorting to caveman speak to get his point across properly. “Fuck’s sake.” 

“I’m a bit slighted that you  _ aren’t _ actually propositioning me,” Jon jokes, and Tim gives him a sarcastic, exaggerated appraising look that all too quickly becomes real. Jon is, afterall, a very pretty man. Long eyelashes and pin-straight hair, and that smile of his, weighted ever so slightly to one side. Even with all the scars and marks, there was a kind of rugged beauty to him. In a better world, he’s someone Tim might have been able to love. He shakes the thought quickly from his head before it can get too deeply embedded in his psyche. 

“Are you calling me a whore,  _ Jonathan _ ?” he asks, theatrically aghast and clutching his non-existent pearls. 

“I’m doing nothing of the sort,  _ Timothy _ ,” he responds, Tim’s full name sounding awkward as it comes out of his mouth. He laughs and then gives a single grateful nod as he continues, “But if you’re offering a bed, then yes, a change of scenery might do me some good.”

Tim nods back at him, glad to see that he’s recovered somewhat from his negative episode. He grabs his book off the side table and the pair say their second round of goodnights. The couch is a lot softer than he remembers it being, and he’s immensely glad for that. It takes him a short while, but eventually he falls asleep, his book resting open on his chest as he dozes off. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's nothing i love more in this world than an anti-hero, and tim stoker always delivers with flying colors
> 
> no but fr, not to be a Gertrude Robinson Apologist, but she made several points on dealing with the entities that I think a...shall we say, /desolated/ Tim would find very reasonable. 
> 
> (also, progress is probably going to slow because i went out in the snowstorm yesterday and got *~sick~*, so this is probs todays only chapter OTL)


	11. ch.11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Jon celebrate Christmas (not really, but kind of)

It’s full on sobbing tonight. Unfiltered, grief-riddled sobbing. Tim cringes as he nudges Jon’s shoulder and he wakes with a jolt and a deep inhale. He looks around blearily before his eyes finally settle on Tim, crouched beside the couch. Jon wipes away his unconscious tears with the back of his hand, looking down at them, confused. 

“Wha’ happened?” he asks, still in the process of waking up. 

“Nightmares. Again,” Tim responds, and he shakes his head to himself. 

“Sorry,” he apologizes emptily. He knows Tim will forgive him just as much as he’s aware that he can’t control it. “Did I wake you up?” 

“A little bit,” Tim admits, waving the thought away before Jon can apologize for it. “It’s fine. As long as you’re okay then we’re okay.” 

“Am I okay?” Jon asks, voice low as he avoids eye-contact. “I mean, in the grand scheme of things.” 

In all honesty, he wasn’t. He was getting weaker and weaker the longer he was away from the office. The statements and dreams weren’t enough to keep The Eye fed and it was taking it out on him, personally; devouring him in place of the information he was failing to get for it. That gaunt look that Tim had tried so hard to get rid of once again graced his features. He hated it, hated looking at him and being reminded that this was his doing. Jon hadn’t gone back to work because he truly believed Tim when he said it wasn’t safe. That it was better for him to stay here. 

But that wasn’t entirely true, was it? Nothing had assailed the office for months now, save for Helen, who sometimes showed up just to freak him out. It was filled with people that would fight tooth and nail against any threat, and even if it wasn’t, Tim was still there everyday. If push came to shove he was fully willing to engage an eldritch horror in hand-to-hand combat. Again. 

And yet for some reason he’d been the number one cheerleader for Jon staying home. He tried not to think about it as he finally gave in, finally went with his prevailing logic instead of languishing in his own selfishness. 

“No, you’re not. I think it might be time to go back.” He doesn’t even have to say the word “institute” for Jon to understand. He just nods, expression neutral as he processes it. 

“Are you alright with that?” Jon asks, and Tim makes an unsure face. 

“Not really. But at this point what choice do we have? I’d rather you be alive and in danger than dead in my flat. Wow, that sounds really bad out loud.” He shakes his head again. “But you get my point.” 

“I do. What other choice do we have?” The simple answer was that they simply didn’t  _ have  _ another choice. Jon would have to return to work before the start of the year at the latest. Wait, the new year? What day was it? Tim looked up at the TV, still playing the episode of Star Trek that Jon had been watching before he went to bed. The idle display showed a time and date of 1:42 am, 23/12/17. Christmas was in two days. Goddamnit. 

He’d never really celebrated any holidays as an adult, but his family had always gone all out for Christmas when he was a child. His parents had been serious Catholics, as was the unwritten tradition for Irish expats, so he had gone through all the trappings of those big family holidays. Sleigh bells and carols and those awful itchy sweater vests. It had soured his opinion of the holiday so much that when he finally moved away to Uni, he had vowed to let the string of multicolored lights his parents had sent with him rot in the bottom of his closet. 

It had been Sasha that had changed his mind, as was usually the case when something in his life changed for the better. The first year they’d known each other, she had brought him a batch of sugar cookies her family collaborated on; regaling him with stories and jokes about her distant relatives as he scarfed down the first good food he’d had in months and nodded as he listened intently to every word. He’d asked her if they celebrated this big every year and she’d given him that weird look. They  _ didn’t  _ celebrate, she said, they just used the holiday as an excuse to see each other and do something nice for other people in the process. That had blown his mind, the concept that you could make holidays a small thing and not some over the top, extravagant...circus. 

That year, he bought Sasha a new scarf. Every Christmas after that, even if neither of them made a big deal out of celebrating, they always at least bought each other something small. Just to say ‘I appreciate you’ or simply just ‘thank you for being there’. For them, it was more about the spirit of the gift than the gift itself. 

He looks back at Jon, who is somehow shivering under three blankets. The maintenance workers had told him that his flat was already at maximum temperature without putting in entirely new radiators, there was no way to make it any warmer at night for him. And yet, he still hadn’t complained, fully content to simply freeze. Tim extends a hand to him and he takes it without question, only shooting him a confused look as he led him up from the couch and toward his bedroom. 

“You’re freezing, I’m not gonna make you sleep out there, you can sleep in my room again.” It was something they did occasionally, when Jon was having a particularly bad night. Tim would offer him the big bed and he would go out and make do with the couch for the night, always waking up with a crick in his neck the next morning. He had half a mind to start looking for 2-bedroom places for a possible move. Either that or a good chiropractor. 

By the time he slowed down to think, he was already standing in his room, hand still gently clasped around Jon’s wrist. He must have still been tired from being woken up so early. 

“Sorry. I don’t know why I...I mean, you know where it’s at, so...” he squinted at his own non-existent logic. Maybe he was just too used to telling people what to do. Yeah, that was probably it. 

“Do you want to...stay?” Jon asks, voice soft, and Tim snaps to look at him, even more confused than he had been. Jon returns his gaze, though the tips of his ears are blushing with embarrassment. “Not...I’m not hitting on you. I just want that to be clear. I am  **not** hitting on you.” 

“Duh,” Tim responds, though the unfortunate hammer of his heart in his chest, the same one that he has gotten very good at ignoring, says otherwise. 

“But I  **am** anemic,” Jon continues, “And _cold_. And I promise I am a very ‘to myself’ sleeper. So if you want to stay...” he trails off, and Tim answers, just a moment too quickly for his own liking. 

“Sure. I...sure.” 

+++++++++++++++++  
  


They’d fallen asleep at opposite ends of the bed, they really had. Heads planted firmly in the centers of pillows, that ‘plausible deniability’ aura surrounding both of them as they tried to fall asleep without moving too close to the other. When Tim had finally fallen back to sleep he was laying on his back, staring at the blank white ceiling.

When he woke with the sun in his eyes he turned his head toward his clock on instinct. 7:30, he’d have to get ready for work sometime soon. He had the brief notion to get up and then realized he couldn’t. Jon’s head was resting on his shoulder, eyes closed, face that same peaceful mask that Tim had seen in the rubble at Great Yarmouth. He was practically folded into Tim, their legs twined together, his arm resting across his stomach, fingers folded under his ribcage. 

“Jon,” Tim whispers, not wanting to startle him. He realizes, then, that his arm is trapped, hand draped over Jon’s back. He gives the unresponsive archivist a few good spine scratches and he grumbles, stretching like a cat as he turns to give the morning sun a side-eye, still resting on Tim’s chest. He then freezes, realizing that oh god, he and Tim are basically a human pretzel and isn’t that really fucking weird and-

“Relax,” Tim continues, cutting off Jon’s anxiety before it can cause him any problems. “‘S fine.” 

“I didn’t mean-” 

“Jon. Shush. It’s fine, okay? No one’s mad. Just calm down.” He looks down and Jon looks up and they both smile at each other, finally at ease with the dependence that had been festering between them for the past several months. Purely platonic, of course. Unarguably platonic. “No dreams?” Tim asks, hopeful. 

“No dreams,” Jon confirms, with a little nod that sends a piece of hair into his face, provoking an incensed huff. Tim can’t help but laugh at the sight, and Jon elbows him in retaliation, hard. 

“Hey!” Tim exclaims, shocked, and kicks a leg, smashing his heel into Jon’s shin. He rears back for another strike, looking at Jon doing the same, and then bursts into laughter. He keeps laughing, so hard that it starts to hurt, as Jon untangles himself and just looks down at him, concerned. “What are we? Twelve? Kicking each other at the sleepover like a bunch of year 7s. Je-sus.” He looks at Jon, who is also smiling now, scratching the back of his neck with a guilty look plastered on his face. “We are fully grown men.” 

“We are, yeah,” he agrees with a sheepish smile. 

Tim grins back at him, for some reason filled with a joie de vivre he hasn’t experienced in months. “Do you want to go shopping after work today?” he asks on a lark, and Jon raises a questioning eyebrow at him. “I want to get Martin something for Christmas.”

“I think he’d like that,” Jon agrees, becoming soft and thoughtful at even just the barest mention of Martin’s name. It was his best look, Tim thought to himself, rumpled and nostalgic in the early morning light. It was the look that made him so intent on bringing Martin back from whatever was erasing him from his memory. No one who inspired that much pure admiration should be allowed to simply fade away. “We’re due in at 9, right? Better late than never, I suppose.”

Tim nodded, and they wordlessly decided on a game of rock paper scissors to decide who would cook breakfast. He shot scissors and won, thanking his lucky stars and crumbling back under the duvet for another precious 15 minutes of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> your honor, in my defense, /I/ fuck with christmas heavy, even if they don't, so tim having a christmas spirit induced cuddle sesh with his codependant supernaturally semi-possessed bro makes total sense with my plot (also, actual plot comes back next chapter, currently figuring out how to split s4)


	12. ch.12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Jon go back to work

Rosie had almost fainted when she saw Jon, half hidden behind Tim as he swiped them into the building. She had insisted on giving him a once over, to make sure he’d been taken care of in his absence. He gave Tim a smile as he told her that he’d been very well taken care of indeed. Rosie also managed to update his payroll and give Jon the new keycard she’d made after Tim had called ahead to inform her that he had ‘lost’ his. The picture was from his original ID and there was barely a resemblance between the two men now. 

“Things are essentially the same as they were before we left,” he explains to Jon as they walk through the institute’s samey beige corridors towards their department. “We take statements, we digitize, we dick around in the breakroom to spite whatever cosmic force of evil signs our paychecks.” Jon snorts and rolls his eyes, and Tim’s smile grows just a little bit brighter. 

“And here’s the office. Same as the day you left, minus everything that got smashed in the...which one did you say that was? The Slaughter?” he asks Jon as he shows him his office, still the same as he’d left it, minus the repairs Tim had done himself, for fear of triggering whatever violent energy resided in the metal of the sword hanging beside him. It had felt dangerous. It made  _ him _ feel dangerous. 

“The talwar is an artefact of The Slaughter, the thing  _ attacking _ you was an avatar of The Flesh,” Jon nods, and then turns to Tim with a ‘gotcha’ point. “But you remember telling me about The Flesh’s attack?” 

Tim considered it, trying to rifle through his mental rolodex the same way the tape recorders did when they were pulling statements against his will. It had been in the breakroom, a week after the attack. But that wasn’t right, was it? Jon would still have been in his coma at that point. So why did he remember it so vividly? Why did the memory seem so real? He could see it now, the break room table, the dingy drop ceiling. He could even remember Jon’s mug, with that same print...no, that mug was sitting in their cabinet at home. He’d seen Jon drink his tea out of it that very morning. That memory  **couldn’t** be real. 

“Did we have that conversation in my dreams?” he asks, and Jon nods again. Before he can ask anything else, the door to Jon’s office swings open, the bright light of the hallway shining behind a very grumpy looking Melanie. 

“Jon,” she spat, voice full of open contempt. 

“Melanie,” Jon returned icily. 

“You two _obviously_ have some words for each other. I’m going to go make some coffee,” Tim put his hands up, opting out of whatever battle Jon was about to fight and making his way to the break room. How foolish he’d been, to expect not to have workplace drama for once. 

There was someone standing by the coffee machine already when he got there. The man was tall and blonde, wearing a nice, tasteful green argyle sweater and...tortoiseshell glasses. Huh. That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

“Martin?” he asks, and the mystery man tenses, confirming his suspicions as he remains turned toward the cabinet, seemingly trying to hide his face. He gripped the edge of the counter, knuckles turning white as Tim took a tentative step toward him. “Martin Blackwood?” 

“Go away, Tim,” he responds, quiet, as though he’s far away, even though Tim is close enough to reach out and touch him. 

“So I  _ do  _ know you!” he exclaims, grabbing his arm and- his hand is on the counter, reaching for the sugar. Tim shakes his head, trying to remember what he had just been doing. Coffee comes to mind first. He was making coffee and Jon’s cup of chai. The coffee machine beeped, its brewing complete, just in time to solidify his theory. That was it, then, he had set to make drinks and just zoned out. He poured himself a cup, and then sipped half of it as he heated up a cup of chai for Jon and a cup of green tea for...he wasn’t sure. It just felt right. He left it on the break room counter and brought both mugs back to the Head Archivist’s office. Just as he reached for the door, it slammed open, almost knocking his coffee over, as Melanie stormed out and into the assistants' office. 

“What did you say to her?” Tim asks, stern as he handed Jon his mug. 

“I didn’t say anything! She’s mad at me for having the audacity to not stay  _ dead _ . That woman is a terror.” 

“She’s a bit aggressive, sure. That’s just Melanie, though.” 

“Perhaps.” Jon took a sip of his chai and suddenly the topic was back to normal work things, mostly catching up on old statements. No matter how much he tried to focus on his work that day, something was stuck just out of his reach in the back of his head. He could almost call it up, if he snuck up on the thought properly, like a hunter on unsuspecting prey. Something about the break room. He was suddenly convinced that the break room was integral to...something. He wasn’t sure  _ what _ it was, but he was damn sure certain that it  _ was  _ to begin with.

  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Sure was an ironic one,” Tim jokes, as Jon stops Netflix before it can roll to the next episode. He’d finally been convinced, after their usual dinner of takeaway and beers, to watch an episode of Star Trek (insert subtitle that Tim could not remember for the life of him: here). Jon had been working through the series the past couple weeks, something about the space serial fascinating him. 

The episode they’d watched was a relatively rompy thing, 60 minutes of a child following around the crew’s resident android, until the inevitable ‘save the day’ moment. Tim was sure that Jon had chosen it specifically and solely because the kid’s name was “Timothy”. He clicked the TV off, screen fading as Jon hid a deep yawn in the crook of his arm. 

“Tired?” he asks, and Jon nods. He sets the remote on the table and moves to clear away their dinner dishes. Tim puts a hand on his forearm, stopping him. “I’ve got it, don’t worry,” he assures, and Jon smiles at him as he picks up the stack of styrofoam containers, bringing them into the kitchen to sort. He puts the half-full container of white rice onto the top shelf of the fridge and tosses the rest of the empty containers into the trash can. The forks are left in the sink ‘to soak’ in a pot. 

By the time he comes back, Jon is asleep, slumped awkwardly against the arm of the couch. He considers saying something, waking him up, and then decides against it. He just looked so peaceful, so calm. It was a feeling that had become as rare as precious gems to them, now, that simple act of existing without fear. Instead, Tim simply picks him up, carefully, tilting his head to rest against his shoulder as he lifts him into a bridal carry. He’s a light person, barely any meat on his bones, no matter how much Tim proselytized to him about proper nutrition and actually taking care of himself. 

Perhaps it was a little hypocritical to preach about nutrition and then come home and order a 4th takeaway dinner this week alone, Tim admitted to himself as he toed open the door to his bedroom. But it was the thought that counted, right? 

He sets Jon down on the mattress, pulling the covers up around his shoulders as he twitches in his sleep. Just as Tim was about to go back to the couch, Jon reaches out, still somehow asleep, and takes his hand, pulling it close to him like a beloved stuffed animal. Something comforting, something safe. Tim sighs and sits down on the floor beside the bed, leaning against it as he waits for Jon to let him go. He’d indulge his sleeping friend for just a few moments, and eventually he’d leave, freeing him to go sleep on the couch. 

That was right, he thought, as he closed his eyes, just a moment. Just a little platonic hand-holding between friends, nothing to lose his mind about. 

He woke up to his alarm going off beside him and he rolled over, slamming his hand on the snooze button as it honked at him. Things took a moment to resolve in his mind as he realized he was in bed, the duvet pushed down to his waist. Jon was across from him, he realizes as his vision snaps to, now awake and grumbling as he faces away from him, toward the window. 

“I hate this sunbeam,” he hisses, and Tim simply rolls his eyes. 

“Yeah, get used to it.” He vaguely remembers being beckoned up at some point during the night, and chooses to accept that as his reason for how he’d ended up here. Jon rolls over and smiles at him, bangs ruffled and out of place, and Tim smirks back. “Are you hungry?” 

“Not hungry enough to get up early,” he replies, and for once, Tim wholeheartedly agrees with him. 

“Fair. We can just stop by the café on the way in, they should have those chocolate croissants you like.” Something bubbles to the surface of his mind, and he continues, “And some macarons.” 

“Macarons?” 

“They’re on the list,” Tim explains, citing their tiny collection of ‘Martin knowledge’ that they hoarded like dragons in the black notebook in Tim’s desk drawer at work. “Might as well.” 

“Mhm,” Jon mumbles, and it’s then that the situation finally fully perks in Tim’s mind. When had they started sleeping in the same bed? When had they become so comfortable with each other that they could have entire conversations just after waking up like this? He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t hate it. His past self would be having an absolute fit, but that guy was practically suicidal, so what did _he_ know? 

His life was...good. As strange as it was to admit, he was content. Being haunted by several all-powerful fear entities was something he honestly could have done without, but that was a hazard of the job, he supposed. But he had a purpose now, and friends to help him achieve it. Well, friend, singular. That one still stung, but with any luck, that too, would change. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jon likes TNG because he relates heavily to Data and you can rip that headcanon from my cold, dead hands. Tim prefers Riker because of fucking course he does.   
> Also! Martin's in this one :)


	13. ch.13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim, Jon, and Basira hold an accidental intervention (it goes badly)

“It’s her leg!” Jon exclaims as he bursts into the break room. “I can’t believe it hasn’t occurred to me before now.” Tim stares at him for a moment, trying to resolve the thought process in his mind. He’d been mid-complaint to Basira about how the sink was leaking,  _ again, _ so the new logic threw him for a loop. 

“Explain,” she practically commands, immediately turning her full attention to Jon, staring him down like she’s interrogating a suspect.

“Melanie has a bullet in her leg. Spectral, if my logic is correct. From her trip to Amritsar.” He looks over his shoulder and out the door, as if simply saying her name will summon her presence. 

“Okay. And?” Basira, straight to the point. Jon sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose in consternation. 

“It’s infecting her. A delayed dose of Slaughter, with a line straight into her blood.” 

“And just  _ how  _ do you know this?” Tim finally asks, and to his surprise, Jon stops and taps a finger against his chin thoughtfully as he puzzles it over. He can practically hear the gears turning in his head; holding a hand out as if to say ‘give him a moment’ when Basira opens her mouth to ask more questions. Eventually he looks at them and then down at himself, confused. 

“I...I’m not entirely sure. I just  **know** it. I  **know** that Melanie has a bullet in her leg. I  **know** exactly where it is. I  **know** exactly where she got it. And I  **know** it’s a remnant of The Slaughter. But that’s it. I just  **know** these things, I don’t know how I know them.” He turns to Tim, for confirmation. “I originally thought her abnormal aggression was just a byproduct of being so close to...uh, everything.” Jon stops himself before mentioning the haunted sword literally hanging in his office, knowing that Basira would, rightfully, lose her mind about it. “But I was just sitting at my desk and I  **knew** that it wasn’t that. It was the bullet.”

“Explain Amritsar,” Basira orders, taking a seat at the table with a sigh. Jon sits across from her and Tim, left without a seat, finds himself leaning on the table between them. 

“A civilian massacre. 19...19? British troops during the occupation. She found it in some book in the library-”

“OUR library?” Basira asks, aghast, and he agrees. 

“Not a Leitner, but still. She went there, got injured, and it’s  _ still in there _ .” 

“Okay. L-let’s just calm down for a second here,” Tim says, finally taking control of his own panic. Basira gives him her signature side-eye, and he’s glad that she and her infinite patience are around for this revelation because lord knows what absolutely insane solution he and Jon would have come up with, if left to their own devices. Probably try to cut it out of her leg or something like that. “So Melanie has a bullet in her leg. And it’s making her...less than pleasant. So what do we do with that information?” 

“We could sneak up on her,” Basira offers, and Tim’s gaze snaps to her, eyes wide with shock. “She lives here, it’d be easy.” 

“There’s a vial of morphine in Elias’s office,” Jon counteroffers, and Basira nods and points at him. 

“That’ll work.” 

“I’m sorry, are you both saying that our FIRST plan is to perform unwanted, unskilled surgery on one of our coworkers? Is that seriously what this has come to? You two haven't even CONSIDERED asking her about it, and we’re already talking about Morphine? And why would Elias have that in his office, anyway? I feel like that’s ALSO a problem.”

“He’s rich. A drug addiction comes free with higher tax brackets,” Jon shrugs, and Tim hates to admit that he has a point. “Regardless, do you think Melanie would  _ actually _ listen to us? Especially to me? Tim, she hates me.” 

“Well yeah, she’s...she’s a bit of a bitch,” he finally admits, though he doesn’t like saying it out loud. “But so are you,” he points at Jon, who has the nerve to look scandalized. 

“I am  _ not a bitch _ ,” he huffs, looking to Basira for backup that he definitely wasn’t going to receive. 

“Yes you are. So am I. So’s Tim. It’s what makes us able to do this kind of thing,” she explains, calmly, as if she’s put a lot of thought into it. 

“Just to be clear, we’re not doing ‘this kind of thing’,” Tim puts his foot down, vetoing the idea. “We’re going to talk to Melanie like adults and explain the situation to her.” 

“Explain what situation?” The sound of her voice makes Tim jump, as he turns to see Melanie in the doorway of the breakroom, looking none too happy to be excluded from the conversation. “What are you little cretins scheming about in here?” 

“First off, cretins?” Jon asks, and she gives him a scathing glare. 

“Sorry; Cretins  _ and _ Basira,” she corrects. 

“You have a bullet in your leg,” Tim presses, getting straight to the point. He didn’t see the good in keeping information from her, especially when it so clearly was affecting her health. She’d always been a little aggro, but lately she was getting into actual, physical altercations with people in research. Just little tiffs, a push here, a shove there. But it was escalating. And he knew it would continue to do so until they figured out what to do about it. 

“And that’s your business...how?” 

“What happens when the thing that’s festering in your flesh decides to just take you over completely? Hm?” It’s Jon that answers, albeit a bit crabbily. “What happens when Melanie King becomes just another servant of The Slaughter?” 

“That won’t happen,” she argues, “I’m very-” 

“It would start with Georgie.” There’s something strange in Jon’s eyes as he fixes Melanie with that over-the-glasses stare and she stops, looking at him with such abject hatred that it almost eclipses that little shine of fear. “She’s a threat to its connection with you. Eventually it will try to take her out. And it’ll use you to do it.” 

“You know that from experience, Jonny-boy?” she asks, irreverent as she and Jon stare each other down. “You’re borne of the goddamn stuff. Great-granddad makes a deal with the devil and now precious ickle Jon lives all alone for fear he might  _ kill _ his friends.” 

“Stop.” Tim stays silent, not really knowing what to do as Melanie leans down, sneering right in Jon’s face. 

“Is that what happened to Martin?” 

“That’s enough!” Tim shouts before he can even process, slamming his hand down on the table, effectively silencing Melanie. She draws back and seems to snap out of it, taking a deep breath and looking very shaken up. Jon is worse, all his false bravado gone in a second. He looks shattered. Irrevocably broken at the thought that he could be responsible for Martin’s disappearance. 

“I’m sorry,” Melanie whispers, hand clamping over her mouth as the entire room looks at her. “I don’t...I have no idea...Whatever that means, I didn’t mean it,” she finally says, backing away before fleeing out into the hallway, her steps retreating quickly down the hall. 

“Basira, can you-” 

“Already on it.” Before Tim can even finish his sentence, she’s on her feet, heading after Melanie. He turns to Jon, who refuses to look at him as he holds his head in his hands. 

They both know it’s not true. However far back in his lineage The Slaughter’s mark was, it was enough that he could live a perfectly normal life without being a harm to anyone. Tim had lived with him for a very long time now, and unless not doing the dishes counted as mindless violence, he was perfectly normal. Of course, that didn’t make the accusation hurt less, especially since they had no way to know if Jon  _ was _ involved in whatever was happening to their lost colleague, intentionally or otherwise. Tim took Basira’s seat across the table from him and waited for him to make the first move. To say something, anything, because he just didn’t have the words to do it himself. 

“‘Just talk to her’, he says.” It’s mocking, and the impression is SO bad, but Tim still laughs, and it only makes Jon more angry. “What a wonderful idea, Mr. Stoker. What’s next? Sticking our faces in a wasps’ nest? Perhaps a spot of hiking on an active volcano? Kayaking across the Channel? It’s January now, the weather is _perfect_ for it.” 

“Alright, you’ve made your point,” he accepts, hands up in grudging supplication. “I should have listened to you.” 

“You’re just going to have to accept that I  **know** more than you do,” Jon nods primly. He says the word ‘know’ so strangely now that it almost registers as a separate word coming from his mouth than from anyone else’s.

“And  _ you’re  _ going to have to accept that you’re not as friendly and nice as you think you are,” Tim counters, and Jon frowns at him. “You’re an asshole, Jon. Truthfully, you are. You are a rude, abrasive little man. And that’s okay!” 

“Excuse me, ‘little’? I’m six foot one!” 

“I’m six four,” Tim shrugs, “Are you shorter than me? Yes. Therefore, you are a little man. Anyway, my  _ point _ was that you’re a dick sometimes. And that’s fine, but maybe let other people weigh in on any plans you make. Because you might be doing it the most dickish possible way.” 

He takes a sip of his coffee and...wait a second. This hadn’t been here a moment ago. He looks over at Jon, and in front of him is a freshly brewed cup of chai, still steaming in its mug. He was just about to say something about it when a scream erupted from far away, if he had to guess, from the back of the archives. He and Jon shared a look and then took off toward it, drinks immediately forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a lot of housekeeping for the notes this chapter. sorry folks, BUT...it's an extra from the schede so y'all have to forgive my meaningless opining, its the rules.  
> a) the comments have genuinely made me cry happy tears. im often hypercritical of my writing (c/o, my eng 305 prof: my 'style is an acquired taste' lmao) and having so many people comment wonderful things and analyses and feedback and telling me that they're deriving joy from something i made makes me feel ecstatic beyond words, so thank you <3  
> b) a confession: i have to read all these chapters to myself in a bad british accent before i post them for clarity/to stop my Horrible American Accent from fuckin' with the dialogue. it's just as weird of an experience as it sounds.


	14. ch.14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim, Jon, and Basira perform unlicensed surgery on their coworker

It turned out to be Melanie, kicking and screaming because Basira had tracked her down and put a pair of plasticuffs on her. Tim was utterly unsurprised at this turn of events. Basira moved around the office near silently, like some kind of apex predator, observing and saying very little during her daily work routine. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to believe she would employ that same tactic towards tracking and be very, very good at it. She also had an ego the size of SoHo. It was Basira’s way or the highway, she was ALWAYS right, and that was the final word. But, much as he was afraid of her, he wasn’t just going to let them operate on an unwilling participant. 

“So should I go get the-” Jon starts to ask before Tim cuts him off, having to yell to be heard over Melanie loudly placing a generational curse on their bloodlines, replete with more expletives than Tim had ever heard in one place before. 

“We’re not cutting her open _ now _ ,” Tim argued, once again having to be the sane man among his batshit crazy colleagues. “We’re not doing it. And can you cut her free for christ’s sake? She’s not an animal.” 

“She’ll escape,” Basira points out and he sighs exasperatedly. It wasn’t even noon, it was too early for all of this. 

“Look, there’s a very easy way to solve this.” He goes to Melanie, looking her right in the eye. It’s enough to make her stop yelling as he asks, “If we call Georgie and convince her to come in, will you let us take it out?” She thinks it over, obviously still pissed, and then eventually nods. Tim turns back to Jon and Basira, both of whom look embarrassed for some reason. 

“Give me her phone. Please,” he sticks out a hand for it as he looks at Basira, and she hands it over to him. “And you,” he continues, directed at Jon as he searches through her contacts looking for the right number, “Why do you seem so skittish? Have you met Georgie?” 

“She’s my ex,” he admits, and suddenly her hospital visit makes a lot more sense in Tim’s mental timeline. “From uni. I lived with her for a bit recently, and it ended...um...” 

“Oh shut up,” Melanie hisses, fixing a glare at him. “You brought a bunch of bullshit down on her when there was no reason to, it’s YOUR fault that-” 

“You’re right, it is. I wasn’t trying to argue that it wasn’t,” Jon responds, and Melanie gets quiet, confused, as he continues. “I put her in danger, and so I...left. Both her apartment and her life entirely. Which was...perhaps not the  _ coolest _ thing I could have done. But it’s done.” It’s half an apology, but half is better than nothing. Tim gives him a supportive smile and nod as his call finally connects. 

“Melanie!” Georgie calls out excitedly, obviously having looked at the caller ID. 

“Unfortunately not. This is Tim, I work with Melanie. Er, could you come in at some point today?” He tries to keep it casual, as if he’s doing something exceedingly normal like making a doctor’s appointment or ordering takeaway. Georgie sighs on the other line, as if she was expecting this moment. 

“Yes, of course. She’s alright this time, right? No injuries, no hospital?” 

“Um...it’s...we’ll explain it all when you get here.” There was the sound of shuffling, like someone struggling to get a jumper over their head. 

“Okay. Fine.” She obviously wasn’t happy about it, but she agrees, keys jingling in the background of her audio. “I’ll be there in...30 minutes. Sooner depending on traffic and this uber.” 

“Alright, see you in 30, then.” Tim hung up and let out the breath he’d been holding, tension falling from his shoulders. 

  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Georgie arrived 25 minutes later, filled with more fury than Tim had ever seen in his life from someone so short. She strode through the hall like a valkyrie; soft bootsteps somehow taking over the entire space as they marched back to the archive where Jon and Basira were whispering in front of a very much still plasticuffed Melanie. Tim swore under his breath, giving Basira a venomous look. She was SUPPOSED to untie her, but it seemed that his word wasn’t worth as much as he’d assumed it was. Georgie knelt next to her...girlfriend? They were dating right? That was what Tim had assumed at le- oh. Oh, he understood why Jon was standing there so awkwardly now, why he’d reacted like  _ that  _ to the idea of Georgie coming to their rescue. 

His ex’s new paramour  **hated** him with every fiber of her being. And that was so intensely funny. 

“Explain this to me.  **_Now_ ** .” Georgie really was fucking scary, wasn’t she?

“Your girlfriend has a bullet in her leg,” Basira answers easily, coming to the same conclusion that Tim had. Neither Georgie nor Melanie correct her, so he moves it to the ‘Totally True Facts’ part of his brain. “We’re going to take it out.” 

“You’re not doctors,” she points out, and Basira shrugs, looking to Jon to help explain. 

“It’s not a physical wound.” 

“She’s been shot by...oh, you know well enough. She’s been shot by one of those spooky things that was after me.  _ Sort of _ . And now she has a paranormal bullet stuck in her tibia.” Georgie looks at Melanie, who more or less nods and confirms. 

“Jon knows where it’s at, so we’re going to try to remove it,” Basira finishes for him, which was a development that Tim had not been privy to. But, he keeps his mouth shut as Georgie thinks it over. 

“And she’s cuffed like this because...?” 

“Our original plan was to get her in her sleep,” Basira admits, for some god awful reason, hooking a thumb over at Tim. “He talked us out of it. So you’re already getting an improved bedside manner. In fact, this is all just a formality,” she says, suddenly becoming very serious, speaking in a harsh, clipped tone and looking directly at Melanie. “You can run all you like, but you’re stuck here. Tied to the institute just like us. You’d have to escape every single time. But  _ we _ only have to catch you  **once.** ” 

“Alright, well, let’s not use ‘ _ we _ ’ so liberally,” Tim interjects, putting himself between Georgie and Basira. He could’ve sworn he heard the telltale scrape of a tape recorder somewhere in the back of his mind, springing to life as Melanie looked to Georgie and then back to him. 

“Well?” she asks, indignant. “Are you going to take this supernatural lead out, or what?” 

Georgie helps her lie back against a table as they stretch her leg out on the tile floor. They cut her cuffs so that the two can hold hands as they assemble their surgical tools. A vial of morphine, courtesy of Elias’s desk drawer and scavenged by Jon before Georgie had arrived, and a scalpel provided by Basira. When questioned on why she was carrying around a medical grade surgical scalpel, she simply shrugs and says “They’re useful.” They were indeed. Oh, and some paper towels. For cleanup. 

Melanie rolls up her pant leg, and they wrap Jon’s belt around her thigh as a tourniquet, pulling it tight. Georgie shifts in place, worried, and Jon assures her that it’s just a precaution. In all honesty, none of them had a single idea what they were doing. Or at least that was what Tim assumed because he, himself, had absolutely no bastard clue how his life had taken this turn. 

They task Basira with cracking the vial open so that they can use it as a topical anesthetic, and watch in muted disquiet as she tears the metal cap off like it’s made of tissue paper. She pours a few drops onto Melanie’s leg and they wait for it to kick in. 

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Melanie asks, clearly having second thoughts about the whole thing. 

“Yes,” Tim confirms, lying through his teeth. “I’m trusting...” he trails off, looking for Jon, who has seemingly disappeared in the five seconds that no one was looking at him. “Hold on.” 

It’s not much of a search. Tim finds him sitting against the wall outside the archive door, an unlit cigarette perched between his fingers as he looks up guiltily, legs drawn to his chest. He says nothing, sitting down next to him, crossing his legs at the ankle as they sit in fragile silence for a moment. 

“Unless you’re going to offer me one you’d better hurry up,” Tim finally snarks, making a ‘let’s get going’ hand gesture. To his surprise, Jon pulls out his pack of Parliaments, holding out one of the all-white sticks toward him. He takes it, putting it between his lips as Jon lights it for him with that strange webbed lighter. The taste is abysmal, but the nicotine headrush washes over him as Jon lights his own, paper and tobacco burning cherry red in the dim hallway. 

“This is extremely poor workplace behavior,” Jon admits, and then takes another thick drag. Tim chooses to let his smoulder between his fingers, a thin wisp of smoke drifting upward to the ceiling. 

“Says the man about to perform surgery on the clock. Anyway, what’s the worst that could happen? This place burns down?” he asks. “I hope it does. Would save the world a lot of trouble.” Another moment of silence, another drag, more smoke poured out into this ever-burning world of theirs. 

“We should get back,” Jon finally says, grinding the filter to ash against the heel of his shoe. Tim hands him his own, half an inch of ash still hanging from it, and he laughs. “I thought you said you wanted one.” 

“I just didn’t want you to be alone out here,” he replies with a shrug. He stands up, knees cracking with effort, and offers Jon his hand. He takes it, pulling himself up and dusting off the back of his sweater before sighing. “Let’s get this over with.”

They returned to the archive, to the scuffed-looking operating table that consisted of the floor in the back of the stacks and a single manila folder laid on the table that counted as their “sterile” area. Basira wordlessly hands Jon the scalpel, looking at him and then Melanie’s leg expectantly. 

He swallows, hard, and then kneels down beside her. Tim puts one hand on her ankle, the other on her knee, holding the limb in place. Jon looks it over, zeroing in on the bullet using whatever weird mental encyclopedia had told him it existed in the first place. He presses the blade to skin and blood wells up immediately, as Melanie tenses and tries to squirm away. Tim tightens his grip, holding her down with all his weight as Jon continues to cut. 

“It’s okay,” Georgie soothes quietly as Melanie starts to growl, still trying to wriggle away. “You’re alright.” 

The blade continues to move, until finally coming to a stop as something writhes under her skin, swimming through the newly made slice, and metal clinks against the tile floor, like a dropped ball-bearing. They all watch in unwavering horror and amazement as the cut starts to seal itself, pale skin knitting back together until finally Melanie’s leg stops spasming. There’s not even a trace of the cut besides a large smear of blood and a puddle of red underneath her calf. Tim lets her go and she immediately pulls the limb to herself, feeling for a scar or a scab. There’s nothing but smooth, unblemished skin. Tim looks around, sure that he heard something drop, but the floor is empty, no sign of the bullet to be seen. 

“Should it have done that?” Basira finally asks, as all eyes turn to Jon for an explanation. He simply shrugs. 

“Possibly?”

“Good enough for me.” She stands up, reclaiming her scalpel from Jon and shaking the remaining drip of blood off onto the floor. “You two can clean this up, right?” Tim realizes that this was directed at him and Georgie, currently fussing over Melanie, who looked just about on the edge of passing out, so he nods. She nods back and then promptly walks off and out the door, her role now complete. Well, that was Basira for you, he supposed. Efficient. 

He turns back to Melanie, offering her one of the towels that she takes with shaky hands. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks, and she glares at him, but it’s different from her normal acidic gaze. Something’s gone from it now, a strange emptiness in the pit of it. The word ‘hollowed’ springs to mind, and he shakes the thought off. 

“Could be better,” she admits, with one final swipe washing away the last evidence of their impromptu surgery. 

“It’s for the best,” Georgie reaffirms, and Tim can’t help but feel jealous of the way Melanie looks over at her, as if she’s morning sun; bright and beautiful and life-giving. A raison d’etre in the wake of the darkest timeline.

“Still, might want to give it a once over with your therapist,” Tim suggests, and both women look at him like he’s just called them an expletive. “What?” 

“Don’t tell me you’ve got the same weird  **knowing** thing that Jon does,” Melanie groans. 

“I’m quite literally right here,” Jon reminds, and she flips him off, not even sparing a look in his direction. 

“No, I don’t. Why, what did I say?” 

“You mentioned my therapist.” It’s an accusation, but not one that Tim really understands. 

“Well...yeah. I just assumed you had one.  _ I _ used to have one. Therapy is great.” Melanie and Georgie both continue to stare him down until realizing that he’s being entirely sincere. “Was that wrong? I mean, if you need a recommendation for one I can try to-” 

“You’re still  _ normal _ , aren’t you?” Melanie cuts him off, a strange reverence to her tone.

“Sorry, what?” 

“There’s something wrong with Jon,” she explains, and he huffs and crosses his arms petulantly. “There’s something wrong with Basira. There was something wrong with me. But you’re just...you.”

“I mean, I’m sure there’s a lot wrong with me,” Tim tries to be diplomatic, “I just prefer not to think about it. I’m Irish, if there’s one thing we’re good at it’s repression.” That gets a laugh out of Georgie, a little one, and he smiles at her gratefully, but Melanie shakes her head and doesn’t push the issue. He and Jon help her up and she finds that she can stand just fine, as if nothing had happened at all. He calls her and Georgie a cab, Jon giving her the rest of the day off to ‘recover at home’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck it, we ball. a third chapter for the ladz today because I've gotten farther in my draft than i expected
> 
> the concept of hunt!basira lives rent free in my mind. just a scary little woman killin' and threatenin'. if daisy's hunt is a bear then basira's is those motherfuckers that shoot birds out of the sky with recurve bows. 
> 
> also, genuinely kinda glad the big spooky eye man isn't in S4 as much, I genuinely don't think i could do ben meredith's elias the justice he deserves in my setup arcs


	15. ch.15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim forgets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> good morning yall, i woke up and chose violence, so who's ready to see some grown men cry?

The morning had been utterly innocuous to begin with. The same routine that had gone from strange departure to comforting groove over the months since The Unknowing. He and Jon woke up to the alarm that sat on their bedside table, and Tim gave it a smack to snooze it. They woke up for real on the second alarm, grumbling and throwing the covers back to face the frigid early spring air. Tim took his morning shower while Jon brewed him a cup of coffee and scanned the local news sites for any sign of strange activity. Then they swapped, Jon showering while Tim made a quick breakfast for both of them, scrambled eggs and toast. 

They ate quickly, got into a disagreement about who was going to change first. Somehow, despite sleeping in the same bed every night, it was a bridge too far to just change in the same room as each other. Tim didn’t quite understand his own reasoning, let alone the underlying feelings that threatened every so often to drag him into the undertow of his own mind, but he argued anyway. 

By the time they manage to get out the door, it was already 8:30, and he hopes that the tube wouldn't be too crowded today. But alas, as he and Jon cram into the humid train car, his hopes are dashed. There’s only one seat left, and Tim nudges Jon until he finally sighs and takes it. He, himself, holds the standing bar for dear life as the other passengers crush into him, swaying with the movement of the train. At their stop, he hustles off, Jon trailing just behind him as he stows his ‘commute book’ back into his bag. 

They swipe in, saying hello to Rosie, and it’s then that the first slivers of strange doubt begin to fit together for Tim. Something in the assistants’ office is different, and he can’t put his finger on exactly what it is. His own desk is exactly the same as he’d left it (read: an absolute fucking mess), and as far as he could tell there was nothing different about Basira’s or Melanie’s. Sasha’s desk still sat in the far corner beside the empty one, dust now beginning to collect on its surface. 

No one else was in yet to judge him, so he sat down in her chair, examining the ghosts she’d left behind. The evidence of her life, yet to be lived, that had been taken from her. Her calendar was an entire year behind, frozen in time. He looked and saw his own birthday denoted in bright pink pen, with a reminder to pick up a gift and some wrapping paper. Her cup of fancy pens itself was equally untouched, at least since that horrible  _ thing  _ had disappeared into the tunnels. And then, wedged between the wood pieces, the corner of something white that had fallen into the gap. He picks at it until it lifts enough to pull up and...oh my god. 

It’s another polaroid, one that he didn’t even remember taking. He was in the background, making a dumb pose for the camera as Bonfire Night fireworks streaked across the sky. Sasha was in the corner of the frame, obviously having held the camera at the wrong angle, but she was  _ there _ . She was there, she was there, she was there. He looked at her and his heart ached, pulled at him, with all the ignorant hope of a child at a funeral. 

She was just as beautiful as he remembered. Kind eyes, and the type of smile that made everyone, no matter who they were, feel at home. He yearned to see that smile again one day, to hear her voice flow over him, all honey and lavender like the old days. 

A tear drops down onto his hand and he sniffles, realizing that he’s been crying. He looks at the polaroid again, just one more quick look before he squirreled it away in his wallet. Oh, Sasha. Beautiful, genius Sasha. He couldn’t look away, stuck staring at the picture as his breathing stuttered, as more tears started to fall. Goddamnit, this wasn’t who he was. He wasn’t the type to cry in public like this. Sasha, herself, probably would have called him a ‘bleeding heart’ and laughed. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, giving the desk an angry kick. He snaps to his feet, catching the calendar before it falls, and curses himself for getting so emotional. 

“Tim?” The voice is familiar and yet unfamiliar. Almost nostalgic in the way it cradles his nerves. He turns and sees who it belongs to, a tall blonde man leaning against the empty desk beside him. His eyes are tired behind his glasses, dark bags underneath as he looks at Tim with more compassion than he expected possible from a stranger. Wait...

“Martin?” His voice breaks as he reaches out, grabbing his wrist and holding him in a deathgrip as he wipes his tears with the opposite sleeve. “Don’t leave. Please.” 

“I won’t,” he promises, though Tim still refuses to let him go. “Are you alright?” 

“No. No I’m not. Who are... _ how _ are you?” 

“Pretty much the same,” Martin (Tim tries to look at his face as much as possible, memorize his true features) replies with a melancholy chuckle. He sits down in the empty desk’s chair, wheeling it over slightly so that Tim can retain his grasp. 

“Jon misses you.” It’s the first thing he thinks of, speaking quickly, not entirely sure when he would get another chance. Martin’s eyes go wide at the name, so he continues. “He talks about you almost every day. Keeps a picture of you on our mirror.” They’d agreed to put the original polaroid back in the medicine cabinet, this time wedged between the wood and glass on the front. 

“I know he does. And I’m sorry to put him through this. But it has to be done. I have to go through with it. It’s for the greater good.” 

“Is that why I can’t remember you?” Tim’s blood runs cold as Martin gives him a guilty look. “You’re doing it on purpose.” 

“Not entirely. It’s...a long story.” 

“I have time.”

“Tim-”

“I have all the time in the world. Just...please.” He was begging now, all pride suspended as he pleaded with Martin. 

“It’s better this way,” Martin whispers, barely audible as tears start to well up in his eyes. “You have to believe me, it’s better.” 

“Why do I have to forget you? Why do I have to lose one of the last good things I had?” Tim lets go of Martin’s wrist, sinking back into his own chair and refusing to look at the man who was, for some reason, still in front of him. He steels himself, after a moment of silence, to look up, and he’s still there, barely keeping it together as he looks down over wire rims. “I don’t want to lose you like I lost Sasha. I won't. I refuse.” 

“It’s for the greater-” 

“I don’t give a flying Siberian  **_fuck_ ** about the greater good. I give a fuck about  _ you _ . I don’t want to forget you again.” 

“You don’t understand,” Martin argues, turning to leave. 

“Then make me understand!” Tim jolts from his chair, suddenly filled with an angry manic energy. “Help me understand! I don’t care how complicated it is. I want to know. I want to be there for you!” 

Martin is silent as he struggles not to react. He takes off his glasses, cleaning them on the soft cashmere of his cardigan, the eyes behind them red and puffy. 

“You were  _ my _ friend first,” Tim continues, “As much as I’m doing this for Jon now, it’s not about him. We were friends, Martin. Or at least I think so. She liked you.” He flaps the polaroid he’d just found, one of the only remnants of his best friend. “Sasha did. We loved you, even. You were ours first,” he reminds, “Before Jon and Lukas and whatever Entity you sold your soul to.” He knows it’s a low blow, but he’s on a roll now, he can’t stop himself to apologize. 

“Before whatever stupid plot you’ve gotten yourself wrapped up in, you were mine. And I want my fucking friend back. I don’t want to forget again.” 

The longer he was around Martin, the more complete the picture in his head became. Protecting him with a fire extinguisher, pushing him out of the way of Prentiss’s worms. Drinking together after work, laughing and happy. Bringing him a cup of his favorite tea and being graced by that perfect smile. And the second he was gone, all that would be taken from him. Disappeared once more into the void of his mind. Yet another wound inflicted by the world that hated him with every fiber of its rotten being.

“You have to trust me,” Martin finally responds, nearly as pleading as Tim is. “Trust me, and trust that I know what I’m doing.” 

“Is that what I would do if I could remember?” It’s that, for some reason, that makes Martin finally crack, giggling even as tears fall. 

“No. You’d be doing this exact same thing. Worrying that I’m ‘dancing with the devil’ or some other charming little anachronism.”

“So you think I’m charming?” Tim hates himself for the joke, but it makes Martin smile, so it was worth it. 

“I always thought you were the best of us, Tim. Always.” 

The office was quiet save for the ticking of a clock as Tim looked around, wondering why he was just standing in the center next to Sasha’s desk. He remembers the polaroid and quickly puts it into his wallet for safe keeping. That must have been it. He’d gotten nostalgic and sat at Sasha’s desk to have an unfortunate little cry. He shakes the thought off as he heads to the breakroom. 

He brews a cup of chai with the electric kettle, and one of green tea for good measure, though he can’t quite remember who it’s for. He pours them carefully, and then picks up Jon’s and heads for his office. He knocks once, not waiting for a response before just barging in. 

“Yes?” Jon is sitting at his desk, a tape recorder poised beside him, ready to go. 

“Tea for you,” Tim says, handing it to him carefully to avoid spillage. He really means “I’m sorry”, an apology for their earlier argument. 

“Appreciated,” Jon answers, really meaning “I forgive you”. Tim nods and closes the door quietly behind him so that he can start his recording. He sits back at his desk and spares the photo in his wallet one more quick look before starting on his filing for the day. 

It’s almost noon before he gets a break, finally stepping away from his desk for another coffee. He sits in the breakroom, as was his usual routine, and reads another Keats poem aloud, trying to glean any sort of memory from it. 

“Sweet is the greeting of eyes, and sweet is the voice in its greeting,” he drones through the lines, not really connecting to any of them. “Where furrows are new to the plough...nothing.” He sighs, frustrated, and marks off the poem with a little x. No recognition. No burst of memory. No Martin. 

But he wouldn’t let that stop him. He wouldn’t let a bit of boring verse stop him from trying to remember. He owed him that much at least. Even if his own mind had no recollection of the man, Jon loved him, and that mattered enough on its own. If Martin was good enough to earn the admiration of his trusted confidant, (his best friend, much as he was loath to admit it) then he had to be saved from the dearth of forgotten memory. He would be remembered, a requiem until he finally decided to come home.


	16. ch.16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Jon have an argument (a big one)

He was sitting at his desk, just getting in, as the hand came down hard on his shoulder. He jumps, heart racing, until he looks up and sees Basira standing there. She’d managed to, by some miracle, be absolutely silent until just that very moment. 

“Jesus, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” he quips, and to his surprise, she gives him one of her rare smiles. He returns it, waiting patiently as she drags over her chair and sits down beside him. “How’ve you been?” 

“Could be better,” she admits with a shrug. “Chasing down some leads from one of my sources.” 

“‘One of my sources’,” he repeats, giving his voice a spooky lilt. “Sometimes I forget you’re still, like, a super cop.” Her expression does a strange little twitch, but she nods appreciatively. “Any luck?” 

“Not so far. Sometimes I feel like I’m just chasing ghosts,” she says, with no hint of irony.

“I wish that wasn’t so goddamn relatable.” He offers her the bag of Starmix he’d been picking at, and she hesitates to take one. He flips the bag over, sees the little green sticker, and turns it back. “They’re halal, don’t worry.” She finally digs into the bag, picking out a handful of bright red cherries. He picks out one of the colas and gives it a thoughtful chew. “Have you seen Melanie recently?” 

“Yeah. She works mostly on organizing the stacks,” she answers. “Throwing boxes. And swearing at inanimate objects.” Tim can’t tell if she’s joking, because that does seem at least par for the course. “Her leg’s fine now. And she talks more, right?” 

“Couldn’t tell ya. Pretty sure she’s avoiding us at this point.” Basira raises her eyebrows at that ‘us’ and Tim blushes, just a little, embarrassed to have been caught. It wasn’t like it was a secret that he and Jon had become more TimandJon than Tim  _ and _ Jon in recent days, but he still preferred not to acknowledge it. It wasn’t really anyone’s business but theirs. 

“Hm. She talks to me all the time.” 

“Maybe it’s a, y’know, one of those ‘girly’ things. No boys allowed in the supernatural wound healing process.” Basira rolls her eyes, but the corner of her mouth ticks ever so slightly up as she chews one of her cherries. 

“That is one of the dumbest things you have ever said,” she deadpans.

“You just don’t spend enough time in the office, I say a LOT dumber things almost every day. I’m glad she’s talking to someone, though. It can’t be easy going through something like that on your own.” 

“She’s got Georgie.”

“That’s different,” he argues, trying to find his own logic as he speaks. “She loves Georgie. You never really tell the people you love just how hard things are for you. It makes them feel bad.” 

Basira nods thoughtfully, as if taking his words to heart. Or at least categorizing them to use against him later. She was very good at that. Must have been the leftover detective energy. 

“Yeah. She’s told me it gets difficult sometimes. ‘An emptiness’ she said, ‘like a piece of myself that I’d grown to love is missing’.” 

That hits entirely too close to home, and Tim stops typing mid-sentence. He knew that feeling all too well. Of knowing something, some _ one _ , and loving them beyond words until one day they’re just gone. Their exits unremarkable, unintentional, clumsy. Abrupt and unfair as they fade from view, spirited away into the nothingness of oblivion. The people that become parts of you suddenly don’t exist, and so you lose yourself in turn. 

“I...yeah. I can understand why she feels that way,” he manages to stutter out. “Probably why she’s avoiding us, then.”

“I don’t think so. She definitely blames us a bit.” He appreciates her use of ‘us’, the burden now shared between the three of them. “But I get the feeling that she’s just angry about the situation in general. Not anyone specifically.” 

“Pretty sure it’ll be a cold day in hell before she forgives Jon for anything,” he offers, and Basira shrugs, as if she knows nothing, when really she knows almost everything. 

“She doesn’t have to forgive him. She just has to be able to work with him.” 

It’s a fair point, and Tim has to agree with her. He shuffles his papers, clearing the desk off into the organizer box in the corner. He turns back to Basira rifling through the small notebook he’d seemingly left out. His first instinct is to grab it back from her, as if it’s some well-kept secret, but he refrains, letting her look over the sparse contents of the pages. 

“Is this the guy you and Jon are looking for?” she asks, somehow fully into their plot from just the contents of the pages and context clues. He supposed they hadn’t kept it too hush-hush, but still, something about him felt flayed as he nodded in response. “Seems weirdly familiar. I think there was a guy that worked here with the same name at some point.” 

Ah. So she had absolutely no idea what was going on. He tries to tamp down his disappointment. 

“He’s a friend of ours,” he answers as she hands the notebook back to him, now seemingly content in her perusal of its contents. 

“Hm. Well, you might consider talking to Lukas’s assistant. Seems like they have a lot in common, they might run in the same circles.” Even shooting completely blind, Basira had somehow scored a perfect bullseye. “But he’s been a little hard to find lately too. Something about a dead parent.”

His mother. It comes to Tim’s mind immediately, ferried up past all the usual fogginess and pitted memory. Martin’s mother had passed away. He doesn’t understand why, but in that moment he wants to run to him, this man that he only knew through the eyes of others, and give him a big hug. He’s knocked out of the reverie by Basira’s sudden absence at his side. He turns just in time to see the door swing quietly shut behind her as she leaves without another word. He grabs a pen and writes down this new fact in the notebook before he can forget it. It stares back at him, taunting in its explicit wretchedness. Martin’s mother had died, and there had been no one there to comfort him. 

  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  


“Where is it, Jon?!” They’ve been tearing the flat apart for the past 30 minutes, looking everywhere that made sense and everywhere that didn’t. Turning over couch cushions, emptying cupboards, moving every single shelf in the fridge. He turns, still filled with manic energy, to the living room where Jon is rifling through his stack of paperbacks, checking between the pages for their missing polaroid. 

“I don’t know! I’m sorry, I don’t know,” he responds, equally as distraught. 

Tim had noticed it when they had arrived home from work. The spot in the corner of their bathroom mirror that was normally occupied by his, Martin’s, and Sasha’s smiling faces was now just plain glass. Jon had claimed he’d just taken it down to look at it, he’d always planned to replace it, but he must have put it down somewhere by accident before he got the chance. That had been a simple enough problem, but as the minutes of searching had gone on, their mutual alarm had progressed into full-blown panic. It simply wasn’t here. 

“That’s not good enough! Fucking  _ find  _ it!” The harshness of his voice surprises even him, and Jon turns to him, face quickly resolving into his signature ‘you will not speak to me like that’ scowl, and frankly? Tim doesn’t fucking care. He does not give a single fuck about Jon’s feelings right now. That polaroid was the only thing he had left that had  _ her  _ face on it, her full face, since the one he’d found last week only had a bit of her in the corner. It wasn’t enough. He needed the full picture, he needed to be able to see her face, to remind himself that she was a  _ person _ once. She was  _ his _ person, and that picture was  _ his _ . 

“Don’t-” 

“You fucking LOST it! Stupid fucking insolent know-it-all piece of shit! Where’s your creepy mind powers now, Jon? Huh? All fine and dandy when you need them, but can’t find a single fucking polaroid when it matters to  _ me _ !” Jon just stares him down, gripping the book in his hand with such force that Tim thinks he might have warped the spine entirely. 

“You don’t get to be the only one upset! You don’t!” Jon shoots back, equally as angry now. “In case you’ve forgotten, that picture is the only thing I have to remember Martin by, too!” 

“That’s fucking worse! You didn’t even care enough to remember where you put it!” It’s harsh, and Tim knows it. Jon’s anger all drops in a second, replaced by desolation as the thought tears through him, but Tim can’t stop himself, he just keeps going, twisting the knife. “I know you didn’t give a fuck about Sasha, but I thought you’d at least give enough of a fuck about Martin to not fucking  _ forget _ him!” 

The energy in the room is as electric as a downed power line in a swimming pool. Jon just stares at him, and the magnitude of what he’s said hits him like a brick. 

“Jon, I-” 

“You want your fucking picture?” His voice is dripping with venom, glasses chain swaying as he rifles through the book, keeping full eye contact as he pulls it from where it had apparently been. Tim recognized the book now, his heart dropping as he realizes that it was the same one Jon had fallen asleep with last night. He, himself, had used the picture to mark the page and had left it on the living room table as he carried Jon to bed. “Take your fucking picture.” 

He shoves it into Tim’s chest and pushes past him to the front door. Tim tries to follow him out, but the door slams in his face with a loud finality before he can say anything. Jon is just...gone. His flat-  _ their _ flat was razed, disheveled and suddenly feeling all too empty around him as he stands there in shock. He looks at the polaroid, at Sasha and Martin’s bright grins, and sighs. He puts it under his wallet for safekeeping and grabs his keys, bolting from the flat after him. 

The air outside is chilly, even for spring, and he pulls his hoodie around himself a little tighter as he scans the street, looking for signs of Jon. He didn’t manage to get far, still well within sight on the other side. Tim runs across, not even looking both ways first, and grabs his arm, pulling him back. He turns around, still obviously filled with justified rage, and Tim pulls him close, holding him tight. 

“Please don’t leave me,” he whispers, close to tears. “Please don’t go.” 

“Get off of me, I don’t-” 

“I’m sorry,” he pleads, “I’ll give you the full apology later, the one you really deserve, but right now you just have to believe me. I’m sorry, Jon.” His shoulders drop as he relaxes into Tim’s grasp, putting his arms around him tentatively, as if just a single touch would incinerate him.

“Tim-”

“You’re all I have left. Please. Just come home.” 

He finally pulls away, and Tim feels a piece of his heart go with him. There’s a moment of tense silence, until Jon shivers in the cold breeze. Tim immediately takes off his hoodie, putting it around his shoulders like a cloak. The beleaguered archivist sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“I want the apology now. I want to know that you’re aware of exactly what you did and you’re not just apologizing to get me on your side.” 

“You think I’d manipulate you like that?” he questions, aghast at even the very thought and even more so at Jon’s silence, implying that, yes, he very much did think so. 

“Hurry up, I’m cold.” 

“I...I don’t know how you want me to say it. I said the worst possible thing without thinking. I was just so...so angry. I forgot you were a real person, and I hurt you. It wasn’t right of me. To bring up Martin like that, to...to use his memory to hurt you. And I  _ am _ sorry. I was sorry the second I said it.” 

“And you won’t do it again?” 

“I might,” Tim admits. “I’m going to try very hard not to let myself get to that point again, but I won’t make a promise I can’t 100% keep. But I will make a solid effort, and you have full rights to decide if that’s good enough.” To his surprise, Jon seems almost pleased with that answer. He thinks about it for a moment, and then nods, just once. 

They walk back together in silence, the chill following them up and into the flat. Jon shivers again, as the door clicks shut. 

“I’m going to bed,” he says, dictating with one hand at the wreck of a living room and kitchen. “You’re going to clean up.” 

“That’s fair,” Tim agrees. As Jon’s walking away, he calls after him, “Does this mean I have to sleep on the couch?” Jon stops and looks back at him appraisingly, and then shakes his head. 

“You don’t have to. Actually I’d prefer you don’t. I get too cold to sleep well when you’re out here.” And with that, he disappeared behind the bedroom door. Tim dutifully cleaned up the mess they’d made, putting shelves back and righting cushions until the place looked just as good as it had that morning. It had taken him...he looks at the oven clock, blinking 1:16. Approximately four hours. Jesus. 

He opens the bedroom door carefully, afraid of waking Jon. His fears proved to be unfounded, as his roommate continued to sleep soundly, covers drawn up around his shoulders. Tim quietly changes into his pajamas and climbs into bed on the other side, keeping his distance as he lays back. Just as he’s falling asleep he feels something bump his elbow, and then a second later Jon is resting in his usual spot, curled under his arm. 

Tim moves his hair back so that it doesn’t get stuck and lies back down, wrapping his arm around him. Sleep came easily, and just like every other night since they’d come home from the hospital, he did not dream. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> local author shoots self in foot by constantly posting from the backlog even though they haven't come close to finishing the arc yet, more news at 11
> 
> anyway, this one Hurt My Spirit. actually the next FEW chapters have all dealt me psychic damage to write. so...make of that what you will.


	17. ch.17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim, Jon, and Basira receive a delivery

“Is this Mr. Stoker?” Rosie’s voice drifts both over the phone and through the hall into the office from her desk. 

“The very same. What can I do for you?” He spins a pen in his free hand, feet kicked up onto his desk. 

“There’s a delivery for Jon at the front,” she says cheerily. 

“We weren’t expecting any deliveries.” The pen is down now, feet planted directly on the floor as he hears a familiar laugh drift in. 

“He says he’s from...sorry, could you...right. He says he’s from Breekon and Hope Deliveries.” His blood practically freezes in his veins. “The package is owed to Jon on credit. It’s pretty big too, should I have someone come up here to help bring it down?” 

“No, that’ll be fine. I do have a very important set of directions though,” he thinks on his feet, trying to put together a plan. “Can you patch Basira and Jon into this call and then come straight down to the assistants’ office, please?” 

She waffles for a moment, he can tell, and then answers, “Well, I really shouldn’t leave the desk...” 

“Please, Rosie. As a personal favor.” 

“Well, alright,” she finally gives in, the sound of buttons being pressed cutting into the feed. Basira and Jon both answer in tandem, making the verbal equivalent of a question mark instead of saying hello. Rosie’s receiver clicks off as he addresses them. 

“It’s here,” he panics. “ _ He’s _ here.” 

“Who?” It’s Jon, behind him as the door to the office swings wildly open. From the look on his face, Tim can tell that he already knows. A second later, Basira is beside him, out of breath like she’s just run there from somewhere far away. Tim stands up just as Rosie appears, the sound of kitten heels on tile preceding her arrival. 

“Oh! Hello everyone!” she says brightly, having no clue the amount of possible danger she was just in. “Is something going on?” 

“No, nothing too serious,” Tim assures her, pulling out his chair for her to take a seat. “Would you mind just waiting here until we come back?” 

“I really shouldn’t be away from the desk,” she protests again, and it’s Basira that chimes in this time. 

“We’ll fill you in on the details later. You can have my word on that.” That gets her immediately, and she nods vehemently. “Thank you.” 

Both archivists and The Archivist head for the lobby, Basira pulling a blackjack from seemingly nowhere and wielding it at first point as they finally catch sight of the overall clad figure waiting in front of a pine coffin wrapped in chains. Tim knows him. He remembers this fucking beast from the wax museum. He saw this very same coffin, in the few moments before his mind liquified. It fills him with a pre-emptive dread, just looking at it, knowing what was inside. Daisy was  _ in there _ . He just knew it. She was alive and trapped in whatever horrorscape the inside of that box looked like.

“Archivist!” Breekon, or at least that’s what his name tag reads, greets in a thick cockney accent, looking straight at Jon. 

“Get the fuck out,” Tim threatens, standing up as tall as possible, like a cobra displaying its fangs. Breekon doesn’t respond, still looking at Jon. 

“We’re here to make a delivery. Just a small drop off. A gift, even.” 

“You’re here for revenge, aren’t you?” Basira hisses, but her eyes are glued to the coffin, to the thick chains covering it like spider webs, all around the central lock. Breekon just laughs, haunting and hollow. Almost exclusively in one ear, like a stereo headset with one side broken. 

“ **_Answer. Are you here for revenge?_ ** ” Something about Jon’s tone is different, pointed and sharp like an icepick. And from the way Breekon squirms, groaning as he resists whatever force has been called down upon him, Tim is pretty sure Jon could lobotomize him with it if he tried hard enough. 

“Yes,” he finally growls, expression now filled with the purest hatred as he looks between them, settling on Basira with a cruel grin. “We... _ I’m _ here to feed your precious Archivist to The Buried. Just like your cop friend.” Basira tenses beside him, readying to strike, but Tim puts a hand on her shoulder, holding her back as Breekon continues. “I’m sure she’s all nice and comfy down there. Suffocating.”

“Shut up,” Basria commands, and he laughs again, like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. 

“That’s not very nice. We...I brought you her body so that you can pay your respects.” He gives the top of the coffin a thump with the flat of his hand and a thin moan springs up through the cracks of the wood, like a million far-off voices wailing in unison. “Even gift-wrapped her in the proper packaging.” 

Tim is about to say something, to tear this fucking asshole a new one, when Jon steps forward. 

“ **_Why are you really here?_ ** ” he asks, and Breekon shudders again, sounding almost strangled as the words are forced out of him against his will. 

“I...don’t...know. ‘S not right, on my own. Not right. No point in doing it on my own. Don’t know what happens now. Thought I might kill you. Missed my chance.” He pauses, hissing as the compulsion runs through him again. “Thought I might just deliver something. So here’s a coffin. In case you miss your little friend a bit too much.” 

“Get out,” Basira threatens, hand tightening around the iron blackjack she was wielding. “Get. Out.” 

“Basira,” Jon warns, stepping bodily in front of her, as if to shield her from Breekon. But that wasn’t really the case was it? Tim looks at her, doing a double take as he tries to reason away what logically cannot be true. Her teeth are elongated, like a wolf’s, sharp canines exposed in a grim sneer. An animal growl escapes her throat, sounding for all the world like a canine battlecry. 

“Make me.” Breekon immediately regrets his words as Basira rears back, muscles straining as she goes to move Jon aside and swing, and then...a strange melody, haunting in its emptiness. They’re not hearing it, it’s  _ in  _ their heads as Jon stares Breekon down, making unblinking solid eye contact. 

“ _ Stop _ .” Tim’s never heard Jon’s voice like this. It sounds harsh, as if tinged with radio static that only intensifies as Breekon takes a step backward. 

“What’re you doing?” he asks, something besides ridicule finally crossing his features as he looks into Jon’s eyes. Something is wrong with them, Tim can tell that much from the naked terror on the delivery man's face. He’s at the wrong angle to see it himself, and he’s not entirely sure he wants to. 

“Let me _ at  _ him,” Basira rumbles, but stays back despite herself. 

“What’re you-stop it!” Breekon covers his ears, as if that will stop the static that is currently being pumped into all of their brains on a direct feed. It must be so much louder for him, because he collapses to his knees. “Stop it!”

“ **_No._ ** ” The static intensifies, grows to a fever pitch as Breekon tries to crawl away. Jon takes another step forward, still staring at him. 

“E-Enough! Stop  _ looking _ at me!” Breekon makes a strangled sound, now leaning against the front door, trying to pull himself up by the handle as it intensifies even further, to the point where even Tim is having a hard time hearing his own thoughts through the noise. The monster starts to scream, before it becomes stuck in his throat. He continues to wail, soundlessly, as he pulls himself to his feet. 

“Sic ‘em,” Tim whispers to Basira and she doesn’t hesitate, diving from behind Jon at Breekon just as he crosses the threshold. They tumble out the door as she lands a good hit, and then they’re gone. 

“Jon?” he asks, grabbing the archivist’s shoulder as the static continues, somehow getting even fucking louder. “JON!” 

And then, all at once, his shoulders drop and he sways on his feet. Tim catches him, holding him up as he starts to hyperventilate and the static slowly fades out. He looks out of it, sweaty and gasping for air. Tim gently lowers him to the ground so that he can sit, resting against the front of Rosie’s receptionist desk. 

“Jon?” he tries again, and this time he looks up at him, dazed, before his eyes focus and he realizes who’s speaking to him. He gives a hazy smile before clearing his throat to speak. 

“Could you get me some paper, please? And a pen?” Tim raids Rosie’s desk for a legal pad and a ballpoint, promising himself that he would replace them for her later, and hands them to Jon, who quickly begins scribbling something down. 

The front door swings back open with a thump, Basira shrouded by light as she reenters, now seemingly recovered from whatever was possessing her just a few minutes earlier. 

“Lost him,” she curses, her gaze turning first to Jon, still scribbling, and then to the coffin. She kneels down by it, putting her hand to the wood. Tim hesitates and then kneels down beside her, and does the same. The wood is warm to the touch, pulsating as if made of something living. She smooths her hand over it, as if delicately carding through someone’s hair. Her normally stoic expression is shattered as she looks at the box with open, heart-wrenching longing. He puts a hand on her shoulder and she looks up at him, teary, and hugs him. She doesn’t know how to hug, isn’t doing it quite right, but Tim does his best to hug her in return. They stay like that for a long while, Jon etching something into the legal pad with all the aplomb of a composer with a symphony; and Tim and Basira holding first vigil with the box that contains what remains of Alice Tonner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not attempting the cockney. i'm not doing it. i will simply crib canon lines and we will make due with what we have. i'm sorry for breaking the immersion. 
> 
> next chapter's the 25% complete mark btw, just a fun fact that i realized while looking at my planning doc today


	18. ch.18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim meets an old friend for coffee

The tension is palpable as they all crowd around the coffin, now transferred to the back of the archive proper with the help of two separate dollies. It’s raining outside and the box is wailing, low and muffled, as the raindrops splash against the windowpane above it. They’d given the key to Rosie, telling her not, under any circumstances, to give it to anyone but the three of them or Martin Blackwood. She seemed confused at the last name, but denoted it regardless on the friendly yellow post-it she affixed to the key’s box before putting it neatly away in her desk drawer. Her desk was on the other side of the archivists’ hallway from the coffin; if by some miracle she was compelled to open it during work hours, one of them would catch her before she could become a danger to herself. 

Basira was sitting next to the thing, a paperback in her lap from her interrupted watch. Melanie was standing as far as physically possible away from Jon, and Jon was ‘not cowering, thank you very much’ behind Tim. The box groaned again, sound dampened as the miles of paper around them acted as soundproofing. 

It was very clear now that this meeting had been impromptu, as they all stared at each other, waiting for someone to speak first. Eventually Melanie sighs, and steps closer to the coffin. 

“So she’s  _ in _ there?” she asks, not even having to put a name to the pronoun. Jon nods, looking at the box with abject dread. 

“I can’t...I don’t know what’s in it. Past a certain point. But I do know that it’s a place. The Buried, The Centre. One statement just called it ‘choke’.” Basira cringes, and Tim gives Jon a subtle elbow. “The coffin is just a gateway.” 

“Are we...” Melanie trails off, pointing at the large letters reading ‘do not open’. 

“Don’t be stupid, of course we’re not opening it,” Tim snaps, and she gives him a scathing look. “It’s a part of that fucking circus, we’re going to burn-” 

“You’re not burning it.” It’s not so much a suggestion as a command, as Basira’s fist clenches around one of the iron chains. “And if you say something like that again, you will  _ disappear. _ I will make sure of it.” 

“It’s not from the circus, I’m sure of that,” Jon interjects quickly, trying to save the civility of the conversation. Tim makes eye contact with Basira and after only a moment, they have come to an unspoken understanding. The coffin would stay, unless it brought more agents of The Stranger calling to collect. Then it would be reduced to kindling, in whatever way Tim found most fitting. 

“So why’s it here?” Melanie questions, and Jon makes a pained face, searching for the answer. 

“I don’t know. I think it honestly just wanted to make another delivery. It was so lost. An incomplete piece of a former whole.” 

“Right, so it’s harmless for now, then?” That’s Basira, getting up from her sentinel post, leaving the paperback on the floor beside the box. 

“Should be. It does its... _ thing _ at night, and Melanie doesn’t know how to open it so she should be safe from the compulsion.”

“Why is it suddenly a me problem?” she asks, incensed and Jon rolls his eyes. 

“You live here. You are the only one that lives here when Basira isn’t around. It is quite literally, and in fact,  _ solely _ , a ‘you problem’.”

“Keep talking to me like that and you’re going to catch the wrong end of a bagel knife. Slaughter or not.” 

“Can you all act like adults for once?” The room goes quiet as Basira chides them for squabbling, before turning back to Tim. “I have some leads I need to follow up on. I’ll be back in a week. Keep it safe, yeah?” 

“Why does he get to be in charge?” Jon is oddly petulant today, and it’s clear that Basira has had e-fucking-nough.

“Do you know how I survived The Unknowing, Jon? Do you know how I escaped? With no powers, no… magic or help. I was trapped in that place, and so I tried to figure it out. And I did, a little. So I kept doing it. And I got out. Then everything was burning and Daisy was gone. And you were gone, and took Tim with you. The only other person I could trust. I sat on a burning street corner for over three hours. And then I got back to the Institute and...” she stutters for only a moment, as if the name is on the tip of her tongue, but not quite there yet. “Someone sent me to meet the new boss. Then I stood alone in an empty office, melting through day after mindless day until Tim came back.” 

“Basira, I-”

“Do  _ not  _ ‘Basira’ me. Do not pretend you know me, and don’t even ATTEMPT to  **know** me. You have not earned that right back yet. Not even close. So until you can single-handedly worm your way out of...whatever the hell it was we went through in Great Yarmouth, like Tim and I did, you do not get to be in charge. You do not get veto power. And you do not make the plans. Clear?” 

“Crystal.” 

She turns and leaves with nary an extra word, the air in the room immediately decompressing the second the door bangs shut. 

“So are we going into the box or not?” Melanie asks. 

Tim replies “absolutely not” at the same time Jon replies “at some point”, and they look at each other with dismayed frowns. 

“You’re not going in there.”

“Well we can’t just leave Daisy.”

“It’s not worth it to risk another life to  _ possibly _ save hers. Not even guaranteed that we’d be able to find her.” Tim finds himself smirking, as if the whole idea is a dumb prank. There was no way that Jon could go through an entire coma caused entirely by his martyr complex and then turn right around and try to get back on the sacrificial wagon. There was no way he was that stupid. Not a rat’s chance in hell. 

And then he looks down, seeing the contrarian shine in Jon’s eyes and realizes that oh no. No, he was that stupid. He very much was that stupid.

“We’ll talk about this at home,” Jon replies, eyes gesturing over at Melanie, who was listening intently to their argument. 

“Lovers’ quarrel, huh? Georgie and I went through that phase too. It gets better.” She almost sounds sincere. In fact, if she had been speaking to literally any other pair of people on the planet, it would have been an accurate callout. But he and Jon were barely even friends, let alone “lovers”. It almost felt like a slight to Martin’s memory to imply otherwise. Martin was Jon’s person, he was just a good samaritan trying to help him out. Besides, if Jon  _ was  _ going to mysteriously get over Martin, Tim had faith that he had high enough standards to not choose him. 

“I’m actively choosing not to engage with that,” Tim replies, and she has the nerve to look slightly hurt. “And I’m going to go make some coffee. Melanie, can you watch the coffin?” She nods at him, after a moment of consideration. “And Jonathan, so help me god if I come back and find you fucking around with that box-”

“Yes, alright. You and Basira have both made your points. It’s not necessary to hammer it into my head every five seconds. I’m not in charge. I get it.” 

Tim doesn’t give him the satisfaction of a reply, simply stalking off to the breakroom in annoyed silence. He set the coffee to brew and then heated up some water in the kettle for a cup of green tea. He never drank them, but it made him feel better to go through the steps of making it for some reason. He poured both drinks carefully, letting the tea steep before adding one teaspoon of sugar. It just felt right that way. 

He turned, mug in hand, to find an unfamiliar blonde gentleman sitting at the breakroom table. 

“Could you bring me that?” he asks, pointing to the mug, and Tim does so without thinking until he finally sees the face smiling at him as the cup changes hands. 

“Martin?”

“Have a seat, please,” he entreats, and Tim does exactly as he asks, taking a seat across from him and a sip of his coffee. “I saw the commotion yesterday. How’s everyone holding up?” 

“They’re not,” Tim admits, watching Martin’s smile falter, and then fade away. “Melanie is a brick wall, as always. Basira’s...she doesn’t trust Jon. Not entirely.” 

“Daisy didn’t trust Jon. It makes sense that Basira wouldn’t either.” He takes a sip of his tea and sighs contentedly. “Perfect, as usual.” 

“You should come back. Things would be so much easier if you came back.”

“Tim, you know I can’t-” he starts, before they both realize that Tim doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember. They could have had this same talk in thousands of iterations and he would still react as if he was seeing Martin again for the first time. 

“Jon doesn’t listen to me. Ever. And now with Basira pulling rank on him  _ for me _ it’s worse than ever. I just know he’s going to put himself in danger because he always thinks he’s right.” He huffs, frustrated, before turning back to Martin. “But he’d listen to you. He’d think twice about sacrificing himself if he had someone he cared about to come back to.” 

“He cares about you, Tim,” Martin points out, and he waves the thought away, dismissing it immediately. 

“Not in the same way. I’m just his roommate. But you?” He gives Martin a put-on smile, trying for all he’s worth to not acknowledge the sickly wash of jealousy rolling over him. “He talks about you like you’re the sun, like the entire world is your creation. Which, considering what kind of creepy crawlies lurk around here, isn’t exactly a compliment. But he’d mean it like one.”

“I’m doing important work with Peter Lukas. Research. Wait, did you just say Jon is your  _ roommate _ ?” Now it’s Martin’s turn to sound jealous, apparently. 

“Yeah, we...I let him stay at my flat after he got out of the hospital. And then he just kinda. Didn’t leave.” 

“So he’s homeless?” Martin asks, and Tim shakes his head vehemently. 

“No, he lives with me.” 

“Your flat is a one bedroom.” There’s silence as Tim tries to find a reasonable explanation. “Are you and Jon...together?” He’s never heard a more loaded question in his entire life, and the fact that it’s utterly untrue is so laughable that he actually snorts, almost spilling his coffee. 

“God, no. He’s still desperately in love with you.” 

Martin sputters, face burning bright red with embarrassment as he tries to process the sentence. 

“No he is not,” he finally responds, flustered beyond belief. Tim chuckles and shakes his head knowingly. 

“He very much is. We lost the only picture we have of you and he lost his fucking mind. I mean, I lost mine too, but that’s part of my whole thing, so it doesn’t really carry the same panache.” 

Martin is very quiet, looking down and fiddling with the handle of his mug as he avoids saying anything. He almost seems to fade from view for a moment, before Tim grabs his wrist and he goes back to being fully corporeal.

“Look, if you won’t come back for me, then will you do it for Jon?” 

“I don’t know if I  _ can _ come back.” He admits it with tears in the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know if this...if what I  _ am  _ now is something a person can come back from.” 

“Can you try? Will you promise me that you’ll at least try?” Martin hesitates, then nods. “Okay. I’m going to hold you to that.”

“Don’t tell Jon. Please. I don’t want him to be disappointed if I can’t...if this isn’t something I can recover from.” 

“I won’t even remember we had this conversation,” Tim promises. The second his mouth closes, he realizes he’s sitting alone in the breakroom. Why was he here again? The mug in his hands reminds him. Oh, yes. Coffee. He must have just zoned out while he was having his noon break. He rinses his cup and puts it back in the cupboard, before making Jon a cup of decaf herbal tea. Some fancy hibiscus kind that he’d insisted on swapping out for at least a  _ few _ of his daily cups of chai. That amount of caffeine couldn’t be healthy. 

He brought the mug back to the section of the archive that was housing the coffin, surprised to see Jon sitting in front of it, alone, scribbling into a notebook. He sits down beside him, putting the mug into his sightline wordlessly. Jon eyes it, takes a sip, and goes back to his etchings. 

“I thought I asked Melanie to keep an eye on you,” Tim points out, and Jon laughs to himself. 

“She said, and I quote, ‘Knock yourself out, I hope you drown or something’. Exact words.” 

“Yep, that’s our Melanie.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that writer's block smacks like a bitch, but we persist. gonna have to actually hold to my one-a-day post schedule til i either get rid of it or work thru the backlog entirely ;-;


	19. ch.19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim witnesses a disappearance

“I think I could do it if I just had an anchor. Something to navigate back to on this side of the veil.” Jon is sitting at the living room table, still puzzling through his list of batshit insane rescue plots as Tim cooked dinner. He’d chosen to make carbonara for some reason, and the sauce was giving him an absolute migraine to get right. 

“In a metaphysical sense, or?” he asks, as the sauce hisses in the pan as he stirs it, hoping for a better consistency. 

“No. Knowing these entities, it would have to be something physical. A part of me, but separate.” 

“Okay, so hypothetically, if you were ever allowed to try this idea -which by the way would require both mine  _ and _ Basira’s approval- then do we just cut off a toe and call it good or will it need to be something...worse.” 

“I don’t think that would work. It needs to be enough of me that I can feel it from the other side. Something with a bone in it.” 

“Toes do have bones,” Tim points out, grinning to himself as the sauce finally comes together. He mixes it with the noodles and starts to spoon out their plates as Jon continues. 

“That’s not what I meant. I meant a big bone. Something important.” Tim carries over their plates and sets them on the table, sitting beside Jon as he picks over the food. 

“Is there bacon in this? I’m-”

“A vegetarian, I know. It’s seitan bacon. Vegany thing. It’s made from wheat flour.” Jon eyes it suspiciously, and then takes a bite and makes that ‘oh, this is surprisingly alright’ face that Tim found so very charming. 

“It’s quite good. I’ll never stop being surprised at just how good of a cook you are.” Tim can’t help but grin at the compliment as he tries his own plate. Jon’s not lying, it’s pretty delicious. 

“I do pretty well for a bachelor,” he brags, and a strange look crosses Jon’s face for just a moment, almost imperceptible, and then gets lost behind another bite of pasta. “But tell me more about this anchor idea. Are we talking full arm?” 

“I was thinking a rib, actually. There’s a couple floating ones that I don’t think would be a great loss. But then...” he trails off, and Tim waits for him to continue, but he just takes another bite of carbonara. 

“Jon?”

“Hm? Sorry. This pasta’s really good.” He clears his throat and continues, “Anyway, do you remember that incident we had. A month or so ago.” 

“I try very hard to both remember and forget it,” Tim answers truthfully. 

“Do you remember how cold it was outside? Well, it was cold enough to make the stairs extremely icy and I...fell. Pretty hard.” 

“You ate it on some black ice,” Tim simplifies, and he reluctantly nods. 

“I did. Hard enough to split my scar back open.” That makes Tim pause, in that moment very concerned as he takes Jon’s face carefully in his hands, looking him over for any sign of damage before gently releasing him. 

“It doesn’t look busted. And it didn’t that night either.” 

“It healed. As soon as it split, it healed right back up. Just like Melanie’s leg.” They both consider it for a moment as they eat. 

“So you’ve got like, a superpower. Super healing. You’re a cleric/warlock multiclass now.” 

“It’s a superpower whose main side effect is keeping my bones in my body. And I would like at least one of them to be  _ out _ of my body. So we see the problem here.” He gives it another quick consideration, then adds, “And if anything I’m a hexblade paladin. Some respect on the good Sims name, if you don’t mind. Cleric multiclass...how dare you.” Tim can’t help but laugh. 

“The day you manage to convince me that you, of all people, could effectively cast from Charisma is the day the sky will turn green and we’ll be inundated with flying pigs.” 

“I’m a lot more charismatic than you think,” Jon argues, to no avail. He goes quiet, thinking again as he scribbles something else into his notebook. 

“What are you writing?” 

“Nothing, just had an idea.” That’s his guilty voice. He’s got the guilty voice on, something has gone awry here. 

“You’re not _actually_ trying to put together a plan to go into that thing, are you?” Tim tries to look at the pages and Jon snaps it closed, laying it beside his plate. “You are.”

“I can’t leave Daisy in there, Tim. I just can’t.” He sounds sincere, and it’s a noble premise, it really is, but Tim simply will not allow it. 

“No. We’re gonna wait ‘til Basira gets back. I don’t want to be on the receiving end of those fucking canines.” Jon gives him a weird look, as if he’s lost. “Do you not see her face? When she goes all, y’know, Hunt-y.” 

“I don’t. In fact I have no idea-”

“When we were fending off that delivery thing,” he interrupts, “She went all wolfy. Big scary teeth and crazy growls. Did you not see that?” 

“She looked like normal Basira to me at the time. But I was preoccupied, so I can’t be entirely sure.” 

“That’s not- hold on, let’s not lose the original topic. You’re not going into the coffin. You’re not.” Jon sighs, frustrated, and stacks their empty dinner dishes together before replying. 

“How many times do I have to tell you this? I am a grown man, I can do whatever I want.”

“Not while I’m still alive. Pretty much anything else? Sure. Literally feeding yourself to an eldritch fear demon for a rescue attempt that has a near zero chance at actually succeeding? Absolutely not.” 

“Tim-”

“It is sad that Daisy is gone,” he intones, making his meaning absolutely clear. “Basira will mourn her for as long as it takes. We all will. We will give her memory the fanfare it deserves. But you are not going in after her. I gave you over to death once, I am  _ not _ letting that son of a bitch take you again.” He stands up, taking the dishes to the kitchen with him, the argument effectively over. 

  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It had been a little suspicious when Jon asked him to make a lunch run to that stupid bakery. But he had seemed so innocent, like he really just wanted a slice of good tiramisu. And so Tim had gone to get it for him, without even the slightest hint of betrayal in his mind. 

He returns with the sweets (cake for Jon, macarons to try to bait out the ever-elusive Martin), and Rosie greets him cheerily at the door. 

“Hello Tim!”

“Hello Rosie,” he answers brightly. He’s almost past her desk when she calls him back, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially. 

“I wasn’t supposed to tell you this, but Mr. Sims came by and asked for that key you all had me look after.” He freezes in place, immediately running time calculations in his head. He’d only been gone 45 minutes, Jon could still be here. He could have come to get the key too late. “He stopped by right after you left. Not even a minute later.” Shit. 

“Thanks, Rosie. Here, can you watch this for me?” he asks, dropping the bag on her desk. “I have to go take care of something right now.”

“But-”

“Thank you!” he shouts back, already halfway down the hall. He checks Jon’s office, but it’s empty, save for a half-finished mug of tea and a bit of the carpet that seemed to be wobbling and changing colors. The bit right by the doorframe. No, no, no. This wasn’t happening. He dials Basira’s number as he races back into the archive, almost knocking over a shelf in his panic. 

“Basira! The fucker’s gone in!” he exclaims, stuttering to stop as the call connects and he finally reaches the coffin. 

“Tim? What are you talking about? Tim?” The phone hangs slack at his side, nearly falling out of his hand as he struggles to even remain standing in his grief. The chains are lying slack on the floor around the wooden box, padlock sat on the table like a centerpiece. On top of it lies a single, bloody rib. Big enough to be human. He falls to his knees, vaguely aware of Basira still yelling over the phone in the background. The unfortunate puzzle pieces fit together in his head as he continues to stare at that iron red shrouded bone, sitting on its pine pedestal. 

Jon had seen Helen, Helen had taken him to Hopworth, and Hopworth had given him his fucking anchor. It wouldn’t have taken more than 15 minutes total to execute. 30 if he decided to give the Meat Man trouble. He was too late the second he stepped out of the building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry for this one, y'all


	20. ch.20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim loses it

His first reaction had been to break shit. He’d found one of Basira’s hidden police batons and swung it wildly at everything in a 10 foot radius of that accursed fucking coffin. Shelves, tables, it didn’t matter. He swung at it until it either broke or moved out of his way. Statements went flying, falling around him like snow, covering the floor. The area became a perfect circle of chaos, the blast radius of Tim’s explosive grief. Finally, after what felt like an hour he tired himself out, curling up with his back against the warm wood of the box on top of an artificial carpet of printed statements. 

He cursed Jon in every language he knew, and then spent an hour making one up just so that he could curse him in that, too. He pounded on the lid of the coffin until his hand bled, that hideous wailing emitting from every crack in its awful pine body. And then he stopped. And just waited. The rest of the work day passed, and he saw no one, not even Rosie, as he sat next to the coffin. He eventually dozed off, slumped over the thing like a guard dog. 

The nightmares he had that night were beyond description. Every time his eyes drifted shut, he was returned to the terror-ridden dreamscape that Jon’s presence usually kept him safe from. Images of underground cathedrals, of bodies with their skins being sloughed off, of a wax museum going up in flames. He only gets about 2 hours of sleep, collectively, before the sun rises.

At some point, there’s a blanket around his shoulders when he wakes up, and the box of fancy macarons sits beside his feet in a bag with a bottle of water and a microwave ramen cup (the good kind). Rosie must have come by while he was sleeping, then. That was the only explanation that made sense. He’d have to thank her later, but for now he continued his vigil, staying by the coffin at every possible moment. He only left to go make coffee and use the bathroom, and he tried to make those trips quick. 

It’s raining again, and the coffin begins to wail as thick droplets smack against the window pane above his head. 

“Don’t start crying now,” he warns the inanimate object, pulling the blanket tighter around himself as he stared at the bone sitting on top of it. “I’m a sympathetic crier, I’ll start bawling.” 

He doesn’t know what possesses him to reach out and grab the rib, but he does. It’s dry now, but still vaguely sticky with residual blood. It doesn’t feel much like how he thought a bone would. It’s almost like a hard sponge, porous and holey. Holy too, he supposed, considering whose rib it was. He pulls Jon’s glasses out of his shirt pocket and sets them side by side with it on the coffin’s surface. He’s carried them with him every day for almost a year now, but the cracked lens stares back at him with a new, taunting emptiness. 

It makes him angry, and he picks them up to throw them out of sight, his higher brain only catching on halfway through and making him fumble the toss. They still land a considerable distance away and he scrambles to go get them, immediately regretting that he’d risked damaging them. He sets them reverently back next to the bone and he waits. 

He reads the paperback Basira had left. Twice. Turns out, the cover was pasted on. It was not, in fact, an Agatha Christie novel, but instead a romance about lesbian werewolves in steampunk Scotland. He didn’t see Basira as the romance novel type, but even he had to admit, this one was very good. He just loved slow burn plots where the main characters didn’t even consider holding each others’ hand until 20 chapters in. Something about the delayed gratification, the grand declarations of love, just hit the atrophied part of his heart that used to have feelings. 

He feels completely numb by the time the sun sets on day 2. No one has come looking for him, no one has even checked on the archive staff to see if they were still there. He was utterly alone, just him and a screaming pauper’s coffin that his only friend in the entire world was now presumably trapped forever in. He wondered, if he waited long enough, would he eventually be able to pick Jon’s voice out of the wailing cacophony? Would he wake up one day to the box whispering his name, in the one voice he wanted to hear more than anything else in the world? And more importantly, if so, would he listen to it? 

He’s not sure, as he huddles against the thing as the temperature in the building drops again; after all the research staff have gone home, and it’s just him, the box, and Melanie off somewhere else in the stacks. He’d like to think he’s reformed his suicidal ways, but goddamn if the world didn’t love to test him. 

Martin, he thought, he had to stay and find Martin. It was the one last gift he could give Jon, finding his long lost love and returning with him, triumphant, to the world. But what would be the point? All the world’s spoils and no one to share them with. 

He doesn’t sleep that second night either. The nightmares become more horrific, more specially tailored for him. Instead of strangers, whatever is trying to make his unconscious nights hell decides to use the images of people he knows. People he loves, or loved once. His only saving grace is that they use the wrong Sasha, since he can’t remember the real her either, and they don’t even have an image for Martin. 

But they do have Melanie. They have Basira, who he had failed in his promise to keep the coffin closed. They have Daisy, and Danny, and Jon, all of whom he had failed to save. He watches them die violent deaths and suffer and suffer and suffer for hours until he finally wakes back up with a jolt, freed from the nightmare. 

It dawns on him, as he sits in the early morning light. That this was going to be the rest of his life. Unless- no,  _ until _ Jon came back, he would have these same nightmares every night, just like everyone else that had come into contact with the Entities. The thought made him wish he’d have just submitted to The Stranger’s ritual. Losing himself at his lowest would have been preferable to recovering, to building a life for himself that actually made him happy, only to have it ripped away at the last second. It wasn’t fair. 

He waits. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, but he is. He sits against the wall next to the box, staring at it, for hours. No one interrupts, no one searches for him. He stares it down as if that will help, as if just looking at it will bring Jon back. He does nothing but stare. 

And then, as the sky is rapidly darkening outside the window, there’s a commotion from between the stacks, and a man emerges. He’s extremely tall, and he’s carrying a cardboard box almost bigger than he is. Tim, for whatever reason, jumps up to help him and the two of them manage to set the box down beside the coffin. 

“Martin?” he asks, the name jumping to mind as the stranger cleans dust off his glasses with the hem of his shirt. He nods, and smiles at him. 

“Hello Tim,” he greets, as if they’re old friends. He motions to the box, which Tim can now see is absolutely filled with tape recorders. He takes a step back, for once feeling the normal amount of fear about something, and Martin actually laughs at him. Just a quick little giggle, but something about it makes Tim feel a bit better. “Do you think you could help me set these up?” he asks, finally. 

“Set them up?” 

“I thought...” Martin’s confident expression falters and he frowns to himself. “I don’t know, it’s probably a stupid idea, but I thought setting a bunch of statements up to play on loop might help.” 

Tim takes one of them from the box as Martin waits for an answer. He sets it gently on the windowsill above the coffin and hits play. Jon’s voice immediately makes his heart ache as he starts right in on his narration. 

“Statement of Gregory Pryor regarding his investigations into one Hector Laredo during the summer of 2007.” He sounds bored, the same tone of voice that he uses to complain that they’re almost out of milk at home. “Original statement given March the 11th, 2008. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.” 

The statement proper begins, Jon’s voice changing to impersonate the statement giver, and Tim looks back to Martin, nodding his head. He’d help. He takes another recorder from the box and struggles with it for a moment as he sets it to loop. 

“You’re not taking care of yourself,” Martin eventually points out, as he sets one on the wreckage of the table beside the box. Statement of Angie Santos, regarding a website developed by one Gregory Cox. “Jon wouldn’t want that.”

“Yeah,” Tim agrees, finally getting his recorder working. He sets it on the floor as it crackles to life. Statement of Jennifer Ling, regarding a live musical performance she attended in Soho. “Well, Jon should have considered that I might go off the deep end  _ before _ he went off on a suicide mission into the heart of an eldritch monster.” 

“He’s coming back,” Martin reaffirms, and Tim gives him a skeptical look. He picks up another recorder. “He’ll come back.” 

“What is he, a cat? Got nine lives that I don’t know about?” Tim asks, as he sets up another tape. Statement of Carlos Vittery, regarding his arachnophobia and its manifestations. “He’s...yet again, mind you,” he gets distracted, falling deeper into his own rage. “Yet a-fucking-gain, thrown himself into life-threatening danger. And for what? To prove that he  _ can _ ?” 

“He’s doing it to save Daisy-” Martin rationalizes, and Tim cuts him off. 

“Oh, what a  _ good person _ ! Jonathan Sims, here to save the day! The all-powerful archivist to the rescue!” He snatches another recorder and slams the play button. Statement of David Laylow.

“He’s doing something very heroic-” Martin argues, and Tim has to turn away to avoid blowing up completely. 

“He wants to be a hero? You wanna be a hero, Jon?!” he turns and gives the coffin a swift kick. “Then you’re gonna DIE like one!” 

Martin’s arms wrap around him as he’s pulled away, into a tight hug, and he rails against him, trying to commit further revenge against that stupid wooden box. 

“Stop! Stop it!” Martin pleads, voice cracking, and all at once Tim stops. “Please just stop. It’s for Daisy and Basira’s sake.” 

“What about me?” he finally leans into the pair of strong arms around him, clinging to Martin like he’s the only thing keeping him from floating away. “What about my sake? Am I just supposed to sit here and let him destroy himself? And for what? To try to save someone that’s already gone?”

“How do you think I feel?” Martin’s voice is comforting and soft, and he sways in place, just a little, as he speaks. “Watching you sit here and let yourself rot. I can’t...I can  _ try _ to save Jon. I can do my best and hope that he knows what he’s doing. But I refuse to let you do this to yourself. You wouldn’t even have eaten if I hadn’t brought you food.” 

“That was you?” Tim asks, and he feels him nod. 

“It’s always me. I...I watch over you all, sometimes. I try not to, since it’s not...since I’m not really supposed to. But I do it anyway.”

“I miss you.” It’s only then that Tim starts crying, as the dam in his head releases, his mind pushing past whatever makes Martin disappear, and floods him with memories of better times. He hugs him just that little bit tighter. “Oh god, Martin, I miss you so much.” 

“I’m sorry,” he replies. “It’s for-”

“Don’t. Don’t give me the speech now.” And so Martin doesn’t. They stay there for a long time, tapes playing in the background as they cling to each other, all the other has left in the world. And then they get back to work. 

Nathan Watts. Joshua Gillespie. Oliver Banks. Carlita Sloane, Carter Chilcott, and even Jane Prentiss, herself. Each statement playing over itself in a cacophonous symphony of Jon’s voice that fills the room with vague static. When they finally finish, the last recorder set on the surface of the coffin itself (a tape labelled “Mr. Spider”), Tim collapses back into the little hollow he’d made for himself beside the box. Martin looks at him for a second, and then sits down next to him, in solidarity. 

Tim turns, leaning into his shoulder as he readjusts, putting an arm around him as the minutes tick on. The coffin starts to wail, barely audible above the tapes, as he eventually falls asleep on Martin’s shoulder. He doesn’t dream. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technoblade, my beloved...  
> so yeah. rough chapter. tried something a little different with the past tense. nice little dream smp reference. bon appetit.


	21. ch.21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim keeps a not-promise

There’s a loud crash. That’s what makes Tim jolt awake, in the early hours of the morning, just as the sun is rising. He looks up, blearily, at two fuzzy shapes on the floor in front of him. 

“Ouch.” It’s a female voice. He wakes up a little more and finally sees them. A thin woman, tall with long ginger hair splayed out over the dearth of statements on the floor. And then, emerging from behind her form as he pushes himself to his knees, is Tim’s missing archivist. 

“Jon?” he asks, and both people turn to him, surprised as they look into his hidden niche. He must be dreaming. This must be the new nightmare. Giving him everything he wants, just to take it away. He doesn’t even move, just waiting for it to happen, for the rug to be pulled out from under him and his childish hopes.

“Help me with Daisy,” is the immediate command as Jon helps the emaciated looking woman up off the ground. She’s shaky, unsteady on her feet, as she looks at the destroyed stacks around her. Tim stands, but still doesn’t move, still not convinced that this was all real. It couldn’t be. 

“I’m fine,” she argues, even as she almost slips on a recorder, still playing the statement of Barnabas Bennett. “I’m fine.” 

“Tim?” Jon looks at him expectantly, and it’s that that snaps him out of it. The sheer audacity of it was just  _ so _ Jon that it erased any notion of this being a dream. Tim snaps to attention, offering Daisy his arm to lean against as they help her out of the slippery, paper-covered radius of the coffin. 

“Melanie!” Tim calls into the stacks, and very quickly, her face appears around the edge of a shelf, a mask of suspicion until she sees Daisy. 

“Oh holy shit,” she whispers to herself, stepping fully into the row. 

“Can we use your room? Just until the ambulance gets here.” She nods vehemently, leading them back to her cot in the file storage room. 

“I’ll...I’ll call. What should I...what do I even tell them?” she asks, as she and Tim help Daisy sit down on the edge of her cot. 

“Atrophy,” Daisy says simply. “Severe atrophy. Tell them it’s a section 31 situation.” Melanie nods and steps out, cell phone already in hand as she dials 999. Tim gives Jon another reverent glance as he steps back, giving Daisy some space. She looks between them, analyzing, and then back to Tim. 

“Call Basira,” Jon commands, giving him another questioning look. 

“I...I don’t know where my phone is,” he admits. Jon sighs, and shakes his head. 

“I’ll go call from the office phone. Stay here, alright?” 

“Not like I have much of a choice,” Daisy deadpans as he leaves, and Tim can’t tell if it’s a joke. He’s still somewhat in shock. She looks at him as he stands there, lost. The silence fills the room like thick fog, in every corner until she finally clears her throat to speak. 

“So. Jon.” 

“Yeah. Jon,” he agrees, and she nods. 

“Good bloke.”

“Really good bloke, yeah.” She nods again, and just like that, the conversation is complete, everything that needed to be said communicated in the look on Tim’s face. 

Melanie returns, then, his heart jumping for just a moment. 

“They’re on their way. Had to wake some people up apparently,” she explains, sitting down next to Daisy and giving her dirt-covered form an appraising once-over. Daisy gives Tim one more look and then gestures out the door with her eyes. 

“Go on. Go get him.” He doesn’t need a second word, rushing out the door towards the office. The halls are all dark around him, only essential lights on as he rushes down the corridors towards the voice he hears. He throws open the door to Jon’s office just as he’s hanging up the phone. He looks over, confused, as Tim pulls him close, as if simple proximity could make them one being. He eventually wraps his arms around him, and they stand there for a millisecond’s worth of eternity until he finally speaks. 

“Can we order takeaway for breakfast? I’m starving.” Again, that audacity. Tim laughs, and finally breaks away, looking at him with delirious joy. He was here. He was standing in front of him,  _ real  _ and  _ alive _ and still the most annoying person on the fucking planet. 

“You’re lucky I don’t kill you myself,” Tim threatens, though they both know he doesn’t mean it. “God, look at you.” He takes Jon’s face carefully in his hands, inspecting through all the dirt and smudges for damage, but he’s thankfully unharmed. Just as he’s about to let go, Jon grabs his hand in his, keeping it in place as he gives him a soft smile and a guilty look. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and Tim clears his throat to keep his heart from escaping out of it. 

“I know you are.” 

“You’re still going to yell at me later, aren’t you?” 

“Oh for SURE,” Tim confirms, and they both laugh. Jon finally lets him go and his hands fall back to his side. “It just hasn’t settled in yet that you’re back. That this is...real.” 

“It is. And I am. I’m sorry for leaving you.” There’s a beat of quiet, then, “Why the tapes?” 

“I...I don’t know.” Tim tries to remember why he’d done it. It obviously  _ had _ to be him, he was the only one watching over that stupid box. But for some reason he just couldn’t remember doing it, couldn’t even remember where he’d gotten the idea. He blames it on the sleep deprivation, making his memories of the past few days all flow into each other like warm honey. “Did it work?” 

“Maybe,” Jon admits. “I’d like to believe it did. Have you been here this whole time?” It seems he’s finally realized that Tim is still in the clothes he’d worn to the office that morning. 

“Of course.” It had never even been a question in his mind. He would have stood guard over that pine box until either Jon returned or he skeletonized next to it. There was no returning to the flat without him. 

“We’ll get Daisy sorted and then we’ll go home, alright? I’m officially giving the entire staff the day off. A new institute holiday.” Tim nods at this promise, the concept of going home now an achievable goal. 

Basira arrives a few minutes later, having obviously just come back from a trip, her bag clenched in a white-knuckled grip as Tim leads her back to Melanie’s room. He opens the door and she immediately drops it, looking at Daisy with reverent awe, as if she’s a work of art in a museum. She tries to stand, Melanie fussing over her as she does so, and stumbles. Basira jumps forward, catching her, and the two crumble to the ground. Tim makes sure they’re both alright and then heards Melanie out of the room so that they can have a moment alone together. They sit down against the wall outside, wreckage of the stacks visible beyond the empty bottom shelves. 

“Sorry for waking you up,” Tim offers, and she dismisses it with a wave. 

“It’s fine. It was important. Do you think she’ll be alright?”

“If there’s anyone on earth that can get through this and be ’alright’, it’s Daisy.”

  
  


It doesn’t fully hit until later that night. He and Jon had gone home like nothing had happened, after making sure Daisy made it to the hospital. They had gotten takeaway for breakfast  _ and  _ lunch, sitting together in the living room in near perfect silence. Jon read one of his books and Tim played Far Cry 5 with the sound turned off. 

And then it clicks. He pauses the game, putting the controller on the table. 

“You really went into that fucking thing after I told you not to,” he accuses, and Jon looks at him, slowly closing his book. “You did the  _ exact _ thing that I told you NOT to do.” 

“I did.” 

“Why the fuck would you do that?” 

“It was the right thing to do,” he reasons, though Tim can tell that’s not the whole truth. It’s most of it, but not all. Something about that makes his stomach drop. “You’re always telling me to look for the ‘least dickish’ possible solution.” 

“No, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to use my words against me like that.” Tim’s standing now, rage building in him like a forest fire. “You’re not going to sit there and pin this on me.” 

“I’m not pinning it on you, I’m just stating the facts of the situation.” Jon’s tone is biting, gnawing at the back of his mind as his anger builds. He opens his mouth to speak, to say something so incredibly hurtful that Jon dissolves into tears, and then stops. 

He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. In...out. In...out. He counts to 10 and by the time he reaches it he’s calmed down to what he feels is a reasonable level. Jon is still waiting patiently for his response, book now fully discarded to the side. 

“Alright. I, personally, did not agree with what you did. I do now, because you obviously  _ actually  _ managed it.” He weighs his words carefully, trying not to be accusatory. “But at the time, it was fucked up. Tricking me was not the move.” As he speaks, Jon’s self-satisfied expression changes into a more understanding one, features softening as Tim continues. “You betrayed my trust in the worst possible way, and then...and then you essentially died. Again. That fucked me up, and I would appreciate an apology.” 

He doesn’t really expect one, expects Jon to continue on about ‘the greater good’ or whatever other justifications he held for doing something so intensely fucked up. But to his surprise, he just nods, accepting it. And then-

“I’m sorry.” No, this must still be the dream. He was still asleep. “I shouldn’t have tricked you. I won’t apologize for actually going in, mind,” he qualifies, “but I’ll apologize for that.” 

“I...I forgive you.” And he does, he really does. “But only because you came back. Rest assured, if you do something like this again, I will haunt you for the rest of eternity in whatever afterlife we end up in.” Jon’s eyes narrow, concerned. 

“I don’t like the implications of that,” he says plainly, and Tim shrugs.

“Not like it all you want, it doesn’t change how I feel. We’re a team now,” he points out, “And however you feel about it, that means we’re two of a pair. If you lose a sock, you don’t keep the other one. They just don’t...they just don’t work properly without the other.” 

“Don’t say things like that,” Jon chides, reaching up for him. He steps back and shakes his head. 

“Then don’t do anything stupid.” He reconsiders, when he sees his face scrunch up, about to argue again. “Don’t do anything stupid without me.” 

“...fine.” 

“Alright. Now what do you want for dinner?” 

They get Chinese, again, and eat without speaking to each other. It’s only later, as they climb into bed, that things change. He lays down as Jon turns off the lamp and then rolls over. Tim lifts his arm so that he can take his usual spot, and the Archivist curls up against his chest, pulling the covers close. 

“If it makes you feel better, I was terrified the whole time,” he whispers, after some time has passed. Tim opens his mouth to say something, and realizes that he thinks he’s asleep, so he stays silent, just listening. “All I could think about as we were being crushed under that dirt was that I’d never see you again. Never see Martin, or Georgie, or The Admiral. But it always came back to you. Always back to Tim. It...it pushed me through. It made crawling through hell worth it. Because I knew I could come back, and I could lay here tonight, and you would be there.” 

He trails off, and moments later he snores, asleep. Tim leans down and presses a chaste kiss to his forehead, and then lays back and listens to the sound of rain outside the window. It had been a rainy week in London, and he was glad for it now, as the noise carried him to sleep. And for once, he dreams. 

He knows he won’t remember it in the morning, but in the moment it feels like heroin. He’s sitting on a picnic blanket, the sun shining above him, a cool summer breeze ruffling his hair. Jon is napping, his head in Tim’s lap as he runs his fingers through grey-streaked hair. Martin is next to him, sitting cross-legged and munching on a box of macarons as he writes something in a notebook. Poetry, presumably. Tim had always thought he had some talent in it, if he refined his style a little. Georgie and Melanie are a ways off, trying to get a kite into the sky. They argue over the string and then Melanie kisses her, argument immediately forgotten as they devolve into giggling laughter, happy in each others’ company. 

And then there’s Sasha. Everything else is forgotten as he focuses on her, standing alone in the empty expanse of field to his left. She stands there, curls and yellow sundress flying in the breeze as she smiles at the clouds and then turns to him. She takes in the scene and then gives him a knowing thumbs-up. It’s closure, it’s healing, it’s permission. She waves goodbye and starts to walk off toward the setting sun, and he doesn’t feel the need to follow her. She would be alright. And he knew that he would be alright too. Maybe not now, but some day. Things would get better, but he would have to stick around to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, forcing Tim to use the DBT coping skills that I myself cannot manage to get the hang of: "this counts as therapy. this is free therapy"  
> also, the concept of being so in shock that you play an fps with the sound off was just so fucking funny to me that it HAD to go in


	22. ch.22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim has a series of conversations

“Hello, Martin,” he greets, as he finally registers the presence of the other man sitting across from him at the break room table. He hadn’t been there a moment ago, of course, but Tim’s brain was beginning to learn the tricks of whatever it was that was keeping him hidden. He smiles back, pleased, as he sips a cup of tea. 

“Hello, Tim. Things been alright?” 

“Since Jon’s gotten back, yeah,” he says, and Martin nods happily. 

“And Daisy?” 

“Basira’s been taking care of her. She’s got a while to go before she’s...baseline again.” He thinks back to his first interaction with her. She was 6’ and built like a firefighter, all muscle and aggression. Now, she was thinner than even Jon, waifish and gaunt as she took her daily physical therapy walks through the stacks with Basira on her arm. But, he supposed, that was the best possible outcome from nearly 6 months of starvation. 

“But she’s getting better?”

“She is. She hates the attention, but we all try to make sure she’s taken care of.” Martin gives him a funny look, as if he’s said something strange. “What?” 

“She and  _ Jon _ get along?” he asks, incredulous. 

“They aren’t exactly friends. But yeah, they tolerate each other well enough. How are you doing? You look tired.” It’s not polite to say, but it’s true. The bags under Martin’s eyes are dark behind his glasses, and he looks haggard as he runs a hand through his hair with a sigh. 

“Things are...it’s hard to explain.” 

“I have time,” Tim counters, and he thinks for a moment, before finally giving in. 

“Peter and I are working on stopping the emergence of a new entity.” 

“A new entity?” 

“Like how The Eye is an entity. Just a new force of...I dunno. Abject terror? I’m still not really sure what these things actually  _ are _ .” 

“And you think a new one’s about to be born.” Martin nods, confirming. 

“The Extinction. Pretty self explanatory once we gave it a name.” He’s right, it is. Tim thinks of all those doomsday billboards plastered across the highways in America. Fear of everything coming to the wrong end.

“Okay, so that explains what you’ve been doing, but I still don’t understand what’s  _ happening _ with you,” Tim pries. “Why can’t any of us remember you? Well, any of us except for Jon.”

Martin looks guilty, face plastered in an expression that reads ‘I’ve done something you’d yell at me for” plain as day. 

“Again, it’s complicated. But I...I mean, I’m working with the Lukas family heir. You can probably assume well enough what power we’ve been working with.” Tim frowns at the confirmation of Jon’s least favorite theory. That Martin had willingly submitted to what could only be The Lonely. Had  _ willingly _ made them forget him, had taken their memories away. And all for the sake of what? Stopping a new monster from being born into a world ruled by them? What’s one more log on the burning pile? 

“That’s not fair,” he responds, and Martin just shrugs, frustratingly at ease with the situation he’s gotten himself into. At the inevitable loss of himself to the void; as if he’s already resigned himself to a grim fate. 

“Life isn’t fair. I’ve spent...” he thinks, calculating, “ _ years _ of my life fading away anyway. Before all of this. Might as well be useful for once before I go.”

“It’s not about being useful, it’s about living,” Tim argues, and Martin gives him a confused look. “People don’t love you because you’re useful, they love you because you’re you.” 

“You’re not listening,” he huffs exasperatedly.

Tim looks around at the empty breakroom, wondering why he has the strangest sense of deja vu. Probably because the entire building was a nexus for supernatural bullshit and his best friend was literally an avatar of fear. He reckoned that might just make him more susceptible to remembering something twice. 

++++++++++++++++++++

“Daisy?” It’s still technically before 9 when Tim walks into the office, surprised to see Daisy standing in the middle, looking around blankly as if she’s lost. “You alright?” 

“Yeah, I just...Basira told me to figure out where we could fit in another desk. Supposed to help my ‘spatial reasoning’ or whatever.” She wraps her jacket tighter around herself, as if trying to hide. Tim sets his things on his own desk and gives the room a once-over. In truth, he didn’t think another desk would fit. Not without...oh. Not without getting rid of Sasha’s. Nobody had used it in months, and it had sat there, a mausoleum in plain sight. It was finally time. 

“Here, I’ll help you clear off that one,” he says, pointing to it and beginning to roll up his sleeves as Daisy looks at him, apprehensive. 

“Are you sure?” she asks, and it becomes very clear that she knows exactly whose desk it was, once. Tim tries his best to genuinely smile, giving her an approving nod. 

“Yeah. I don’t think she’d mind, and if she does, she can take it up with me from the afterlife.” Daisy’s mouth quirks up, just a little, into a smile. She’s very pretty, Tim can understand why Basira spends so long staring dreamily in her direction now, thinking she’s being sneaky about it. 

He finds some old filing boxes stacked by the bookshelf beside Basira’s desk, and brings them over. They work silently, Tim letting Daisy do some of the lighter lifting and boxing so that she feels like she helped, while he sorts through the dearth of paperwork that had been hidden in the drawers; making sure that there wasn’t anything important hidden within 75 of the same story about that ‘haunted’ bar on 49th. 

Just as he’s convinced the coast is clear, he picks up a statement and feels an actual energy flow through him. He drops it immediately, the thick stapled packet fluttering to the floor as Daisy turns to him. She picks it up, quirking a questioning eyebrow as she hands it back to him. 

“Do you not feel that?” he asks her, that strange energy picking back up as he holds it carefully, as if it’s dangerous. 

“Nope.” 

“That’s...weird. I should show this to Jon. Maybe he’ll know something about it. Or  **know** something about it.” 

“Sure. Oh, wait, here,” she mutters, and his eyes go wide with recognition as she hands him a key to his own flat, complete with cartoon spiderweb keychain. He’d given Sasha his spare, just in case, and now here it was, returned to him. “Found that a few minutes ago. Don’t like just leaving random keys ‘round. Makes me nervous.” 

“I’ll take care of it,” he reassures, and then flaps the report toward the door. “I’m gonna go give this to Jon. Do you want me to bring you anything when I come back?” 

She thinks for a moment, and then shakes her head, so he nods and makes his way across the hall to Jon’s office. 

“Jon?” he peeks his head in through the open door. “Got a minute?” Jon nods and waves him in, and he slides the statement into the inbox tray on his desk. “Found this while we were cleaning out Sasha’s desk and it gave me a weird vibe. Figured you might be able to give it your expert analysis.” 

“I’ll take a look at it,” Jon promises, and then stops in place, giving him a double take as the first sentence processes. “You cleaned out Sasha’s desk?” 

“Yeah. Daisy needed one, and...it was just time, y’know?” Jon smiles at him, reassuring and warm. He doesn’t say that he’s proud, and he doesn’t have to. Tim knows, wordlessly.

  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“So, hold on, go over that one more time.” 

“Either The People’s Church of the Divine Host ARE doing a ritual in Ny-Ålesund on the next winter solstice, or they’ve ALREADY attempted the ritual and failed. I’m not sure which,” he repeats for about the fifth time, admittedly a little crabby. “I’m not sure what’s so hard to understand about-” 

“Not all of us are semi-omnipotent, Jon,” Tim points out as he rolls his eyes. 

“Yes, well, that’s a you problem.” 

They’re all scattered around the assistants’ office, at their desks, as Jon addresses them with the new information he and Basira have collected. This new problem wasn’t as immediate as The Unknowing had been, but the danger was the same, if not worse. To Tim’s best recollection, those Divine Host cultists were nutjobs that wanted to plunge the world into eternal darkness. That wasn’t exactly something he wanted to rework his life around. 

“So what are we doing about it?” That’s Daisy, ever the pragmatist. Jon hesitates for a second, and Tim just KNOWS that his plan is some ‘let’s run into danger’ bullshit. 

“We’re going to Norway,” Basira answers. “Jon and I at the very least.” Well, alright, that wasn’t as awful of a plan as he was expecting. 

“The three of us,” he corrects, pointing at Jon, reminding him of their last argument, and he rolls his eyes and nods. Basira, on the other hand, already looks SO over the idea. 

“I’ll come with you,” Daisy tries to add, and Basira shakes her head vehemently. 

“Absolutely not. You’re staying here with Melanie where it’s safe.” 

“Basira-”

“ **Daisy.** ” They share a look, like two alpha wolves staring at each other before Daisy finally huffs in acceptance, crossing her arms, irritated, over her chest. “So that’s that.” 

“When is this all happening?” Tim asks, and Jon jumps to answer. 

“Not until June, we still need to find passage north and figure out travel logistics and things. Not to mention the solstice is probably the best time to strike.” 

“Longest day of the year, so the most light, right?” Melanie asks, and Jon nods. “That makes sense. The only thing I don’t understand is why you can’t just  **know** what’s going on up there. I mean, you’ve got weird supernatural mind-reading powers, can’t you just scry up there and see if they’re still kicking about?”

“The Dark is...it’s hard to look into. I can’t see too well, can’t really...focus the lense?” Even Jon seems a little unsettled at the sudden blind spot in his developing vision. It didn’t bode well that there were things that could avoid his gaze, skirt just on the outer edge of his perception. That was probably why he’d never gone looking for the Dominguez statement, just sitting there in the bottom of Sasha’s desk drawer until Tim and Daisy had fished it up. It disquieted him to not  **know.**

“So just like normal dark, but spooky,” Melanie asserts, and Jon looks ready to develop a migraine on the spot. 

“Yes. Technically.” 

“So, alright. We’re all settled, then?” Basira asks, as if there’s going to be some sort of catch, some extra argument that they were forgetting to have. 

“Yeah, suppose so,” he offers. 

“Huh. Well, good for us.” 

“Score one for the home team,” Melanie jokes, turning back to her laptop, the meeting effectively over. They really were so much better at getting things done nowadays. Mostly because Tim and Basira had dragged the rest of them, kicking and screaming, into civility. But the methodology didn’t count, it was only the outcome that mattered. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the decision to write this thing in vignette format saves my bacon every goddamn day


	23. ch.23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim, Jon, Daisy, and Basira have a pub night

They were outside the pub, waiting for Daisy and Basira to arrive as Jon smoked one of his Parliaments, smoke curling up into the night sky. The night was relatively cool for June, but Tim honestly kind of preferred it that way. It felt more livable, and less like the air around him was made out of soup. Jon, bless his anemic heart, was wearing a thick knit sweater, as if it was still freezing. 

It was their last night out before departing for Norway the following morning, and so Tim had jokingly suggested a pub night. To his surprise, the others had agreed. It was a bit strange, waiting outside his old haunt and not having Sasha beside him, but he didn’t hate it. It was...nice. It felt right. Almost. Save for that ever-present blank feeling in the back of his mind.

“There they are,” Jon points out, nodding towards the pair making their way up the block. He tamps out his cigarette on the brickwork and sticks the half-smoked dart back into the box. Tim waves, and Daisy waves back, acknowledging that they see each other. “Do I look alright?” he asks, suddenly self-conscious for whatever reason. Tim indulges him, though he already knows the answer, giving his outfit an appraising once-over. 

“You look good. Why? Trying to impress the pretty bartenders?” If Jon was pale enough to blush he would’ve, looking away in embarrassment. 

“No. It’s...hard to explain.” 

“Try.” 

“It’s going to sound stupid.” 

“I love stupid things,” Tim counters, again, and Jon finally gives in with an annoyed huff. 

“I don’t want to...how would you put it? ‘Bring down the vibe’?”

“With an outfit?” 

“It’s not like I do this often,” Jon points out, “The last time I was invited out somewhere was...uni, I think. Georgie and I went to some restaurant, I don’t remember the details. Or, well, I wouldn’t if not for-”

“The  **knowing** thing,” Tim finishes for him. “So you haven’t had a night out in 7 years?” He’s incredulous at first, but Jon is so sincere about it that he can’t help but believe him. “Well, we’ll make tonight a good one, then.” 

Daisy and Basira finally arrive, with unnecessary and immediately accepted apologies for their lateness. They get a booth in the corner, so they can watch the door for any threats, and Tim leaves to order drinks for the table. He comes back with three pints of craft IPA, a virgin daiquiri, and an order of chips for Daisy. He sits beside Jon in the booth, careful not to accidentally kick anyone’s feet under the table. 

“This place is nice,” Daisy offers, after taking a sip of her drink. Basira gives her a look and she rolls her eyes, pulling the chips to her and taking a couple. 

“Sasha and I used to come here all the time. Us and...some friends I think. Can’t really remember right now.” It’s Martin. He’s used to that strange gap in his recollections now. Any time there’s a memory with a strange blank he just assumes that it’s because Martin’s missing from it. 

In fact, that’s what’s been needling at him this whole time. Martin should be here, he should be sitting beside Jon as Tim regales them with some made up, fanciful story from his past. The thought continues to haunt him, even as he draws actual laughter from Basira, who he wasn’t even sure was capable of it. Any other night, he would have celebrated that to high heaven, but now it just seemed wrong. 

He looks down at his phone on the table and suddenly a thought hits him. After making his excuses, his promises to be back in 15 minutes or else they’d start the rescue efforts, he slinks out the front door. He scrolls through his contacts, searching for the number he feels incredibly stupid for forgetting about. Thank god for technology. And there it is, under “Martin (from work)” of all things. He wonders how he’s missed this very important thread for the past almost  _ year,  _ blaming it immediately on anything except his own forgetfulness. 

It rings once, twice, three times. He’s cursing himself for his stupidity by the sixth ring. Of course he wasn’t going to actually answer, what a dumb idea for-

“Hello?” The voice on the other end is muffled and sleepy, as if just woken up. 

“Martin!” he exclaims in shock, and then lowers his voice just in case anyone was listening. He wouldn’t put it past Basira and Daisy to have some previously un-remarked upon super hearing ability. 

“Tim? How did you get my number?” He’s obviously confused, and Tim wishes he had an answer for him. 

“I think I’ve always had it. I just haven’t been able to notice it until now.” It’s the best explanation he can come up with on short notice. 

“Is something wrong?” There’s a note of panic in Martin’s voice, and he quickly clarifies. 

“No, no, no. Well, not anything serious. We’re all out at the pub, and it just...it doesn’t feel right without you. I don’t know for sure if you used to come with us,” he admits, “but tonight at least, it feels like you should be here.”

“I can’t, Tim.” It’s an outright rejection of the invitation that he had thought he was being very clever about.

“I know. I just thought it might be nice to know that, y’know, we miss you. That even when we can’t see you, we’re still thinking about you.” The other line is quiet for a long time, and he coughs and continues. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’re going away for a bit tomorrow.” 

“To Ny-Ålesund,” Martin confirms. “I’ve heard.” He sighs, and Tim feels his heart break. “Take care of Jon for me while you’re out there, okay? Keep him safe.” 

“I will, I promise. Will you keep an eye on Daisy for me?” Martin makes a surprised noise, and he smiles into the cool night air. “C’mon, she’s not that bad.”

“She’s...scary,” he finally admits, sheepishly. 

“You don’t have to talk to her, just, y’know, check in on her every once in a while. Stare at her from behind a shelf or whatever you do for the rest of us.”

“You make it sound like I stalk you guys.”

“You care too much not to.” The other line goes quiet again, so he continues, “I’ve got to get back now, but please? As a favor for me, if you won’t do it for Basira’s sake.”

“Fine,” he finally capitulates. “But only because you’ve tried so hard to ask me.” 

“I know. You’re a difficult man to get in contact with.” He sighs, not really wanting to hang up just yet. “I hate that I won’t remember this.”

“Me too. But it’ll all be done soon. I promise.”

“What? Martin, I-” 

The call goes dead in his hand, whoever he’d been speaking to having hung up mid-sentence. He doesn’t even remember who he’d been calling, let alone why he’d had to go outside to do it. They’d probably be missing him inside, he should really get back in. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  


“C’mon, we’re home,” he entreats, pulling a very drunken Jon out of the cab. It had been an absolute herculean effort to get him  _ into  _ the cab in the first place, and now he didn’t want to leave it. 

“Oh, but it’s COLD,” he complains, hanging off Tim’s arm as he pays the driver. He wobbles, almost falling over, and he barely catches him before he goes tumbling to the ground. 

“Jesus, when’s the last time you drank?”

“Yeeeeeears ago,” he responds, still somewhat unsteady on his feet. 

“And you thought it would be a good idea to get sloshed today...why?” 

“Dunno. ‘S fun.” He tries to take a step and nearly topples. It’s the final straw for Tim, who sighs and sweeps him off his feet, carrying him over the threshold of their building like a new bride. 

“You’re lucky I like you,” he jokes, and Jon’s eyes go wide with surprise.

“You actually like me?” 

“Holy shit, you really  _ are  _ sloshed.” Tim can’t help but laugh as he makes his way back to their flat, careful not to drop his favorite archivist. “Jon, you live in my house. I cook you homemade dinners. We sleep in the same bed, for fuck’s sake. Of course I like you.” 

“But you don’t  _ like  _ me,” he whines, posh accent like whiplash against the childishness of his words. 

“I just told you that I do,” he reiterates, finally arriving at the door. “Can you get my keys? They’re in my shirt pocket.” Jon reaches for them, but his old glasses are stuck in the keyring and they come out tangled together. He just stares at them, as if he never expected to see them again. “Jon,” Tim has to remind him, “the keys.” 

“Hmm? Oh, right.” He readjusts as Jon unlocks the door, almost sending both of them down to the floor, again. He manages to right them, catching his balance enough to close the door behind him with his foot. It swings shut as he waits for Jon to finally get tired of being carried and insist on walking to bed himself, but, unfortunately, he seems perfectly happy to stay in Tim’s arms. He sighs, and continues, trying his best to navigate the narrow hall without smacking Jon’s feet into the wall. He finally sets him down, giggling, and tries to get his breath back. It’s not like Jon was all that heavy, but he’d carried him a good distance. 

“Take your shoes off!” Tim chides, as he tries to crawl under the covers with them still on. “We’re not animals.” The blanket is already over his head, but two dusty Cole Haans drop to the ground beside the bed. Good enough. He didn’t have it in him to fight about changing out of his outside clothes. 

By the time Tim is changed into pajamas, Jon is already half-asleep, knocked out by the alcohol. He grumbles as the lights are turned off, as Tim climbs into bed on his side. 

“C’mere.” He makes a grabby hands gesture that is so very out of character that it makes Tim laugh. He moves his arm and Jon clings to him like a magnet with a contented sigh. 

“Those beers really turned you into a different person, huh?” he whispers, and Jon kicks at his leg in retaliation. 

“I can be fun sometimes. I’m a fun person.” 

“You sure are. A goddamn terror to corral,” he remembers the 15 minutes of hell that had been the wait for the cab outside the pub. “But yeah, very fun.” 

“Not  _ posh _ .” He says the word like it’s a swear, and Tim smiles, ruffling his hair, just enough to annoy him. 

“No, not very posh,” he agrees, and Jon gives a prim little nod. “You’re going to be  _ extremely  _ hung over tomorrow.” 

“That’s morning Jon’s problem.”

“You are ‘morning Jon’, in case you’ve forgotten.” He grumbles noncommittally, one step away from falling asleep. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”

“You always do,” he responds, voice so full of admiration that it stops Tim’s thought process in its tracks. By the time he fully processes the sentence (not even how it made him feel, just the words themselves) Jon is already snoring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just personally think it would be really funny if the prim, proper academia man turned into a stumbling idiot after a couple beers. also i already established that he's anemic, and like, ALL of us are lightweights according to science, so i had to make it track


	24. ch.24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim, Jon, and Basira take a trip to Norway

“And you have your passport?”

“Yes.”

“And your tickets?”

“Yes.”

“And you took the acetamin-”

“I took it, yes,” Jon grumbles, rubbing his temple as if that’s going to make his hangover dissipate. “Remind me to never drink again.”

“Oh, but you’re such a fun drunk,” Tim jokes as he gives their suitcases a second look, just to make sure they had everything they needed. It would be almost impossible to replace anything once they got onto the boat, so they had to have it all with them. Everything seemed fine. Two bags, plus his carry-on and the bag containing Jon’s supply of statements. That would have to do. 

“Am I? I can’t remember a single thing beyond that third pint.”

“You spent the better part of an hour telling us all about the intricacies of one of your Star Trek episodes. The one where they put the robot on trial.” Jon somehow manages to look both affronted and ashamed at the same time. 

“He’s an android, there’s a difference. That’s the whole point of the episode. Did I really do that?”

“Basira seemed really into it,” Tim consoles, “She was asking you questions and everything.” 

“Really?” That perks him up, absolving some of his unnecessary guilt. 

“Mhm. You’re a real entertainer when you’re not worried about how you’re coming across.” He checks the oven clock, to make sure they’re not running late. They’re not,  _ yet _ , but they really do need to get going. “Ready to go?” 

He carries the bags out, leaving Jon with the keys to lock up. He gives the flat one last, longing look, as if taking it in for the last time. 

“Hey,” Tim calls softly, “We’re coming back.” Jon gives him a skeptical look, and he reiterates, “We are. I promise.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.” The door is locked, and Jon brings the keys back to him. He shakes his head, pulling the spare from his pocket. 

“Nope, that’s yours,” he says, as Jon tilts his head at him, confused to the point of wordlessness. “I should’ve gotten you one months ago.” 

“You’re giving me a key to your flat?” Tim laughs at Jon’s tone, somehow still not getting it. 

“I’m giving you a key to  _ our _ flat. It hasn’t been  _ my _ flat for a long time now.” He picks up the suitcases as Jon looks down at the piece of metal in his hands as if it’s a precious work of art. “Let’s go. Don’t want to keep Basira waiting. I told her to meet us out front at 6 and it’s nearly 5:45.”

“Doesn’t that make us early?”

“She always seems to do things 15 minutes ahead.” Tim shrugs. “Figured I should adjust to run on Basira-Time before we’re stuck on a boat together for two weeks.”

  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  


Basira had indeed been waiting for them. The three of them take an uber to Heathrow, and then board their plane to Norway by way of Oslo. Someone must have pulled some strings, because they get bumped up from their economy seats to business class, and Tim is glad for the leg room. All three of them were above 6’, and he swore they made airplane seats solely for people under 5’5”, so it was a welcome change. 

He turns to Jon as soon as they’re in the air, his headphones on as he finishes listening to his morning statement. Jon pauses the tape, pulling his headphones down around his neck. 

“An interesting one?” 

“One of Gertrude’s,” he responds, motioning at it. “About Agnes Montague.” 

“Montague? Is that the serial killer’s daughter?” Jon shakes his head. 

“No, that’s Montauk. Agnes Montague was the...I guess you could call her a prophetess, of the Church of the Lightless Flame.”

Tim tries to use his context clues to figure out which entity that was an offshoot of. A church, so that’s already one of the more cerebral ones. Flame makes him think of destruction, but ‘lightless’ throws him for a loop. 

“That’s the...Desolation,” he guesses, and Jon seems very proud. 

“Yes, she was the last figurehead the Church had before they went into hiding.” He scratches at the large burn scar that covers his left hand absentmindedly. 

“Did she go with them?” Tim asks, now invested in the story. The Lightless Flame must have been the ones responsible for one of his many worrying escapades. “Is she the one who...” he points to Jon’s scarred hand in a way that he hopes is tactful. 

“Agnes is dead.” He says it simply, as if it’s just another statistic. “According to Gertrude. The Lightless Flame failed in their ritual before they could even attempt it, so she sacrificed herself in hopes that they could try again sooner, rather than later.”

“Another ruined ritual.”

“Mhm. She was born to be a messiah. The prophet meant to sit the throne, to drown in flame the mountains of man.” 

“That’s from one of my games,” Tim catches him out, recognizing the quote with a smile. Jon keeps his face even, betraying no secrets. “Do you actually watch me play while you pretend to be reading?” 

“Do you want me to tell you about the statement or not?” he tries to change the subject. Tim lets the issue drop, motioning for him to continue. “So Agnes is their prophet. Sole keeper of the purest form of their ideology, quite literally  _ born _ for the purpose of being their demagogue.”

“Why the sacrifice, then?”

“I’m getting to that. She eventually martyrs herself because she starts to have...doubts. That’s it.”

“And that’s enough?”

“Seems so. I mean, it’s in keeping with the tenets of The Desolation. Without destroying everything that made her, well,  _ her _ , she was unfit to perform whatever her entity’s ritual was. Having doubts tainted her, made her unworthy.” Jon makes a face, as if he dislikes what he’s about to say, and then lowers his voice, leaning in. “They hung her. No great event just...just a simple death.”

“But you think they fucked it up somehow,” Tim extrapolates. Jon nods, seemingly surprised that he had picked up on it so easily. 

“I think that by hanging Agnes, by having to give up the messiah that they had sacrificed all their resources to bring about, that they...that they genuinely loved,” he gets lost in thought for a moment, before quickly finishing, “They accidentally attempted their ritual. And it failed.”

“That’s why you’re not worried about them making an appearance any time soon.” Jon nods, and Tim feels very pleased that he’d been able to follow all of that. Normally the finer points of exactly who had done what and what entity belonged to whom escaped his mental grasp, but he was getting better at remembering. 

Tim tries to sleep through most of the flight, catching up on the hours he’d lost by waking up so early. By the time they finally arrive in Oslo he’s feeling much better, and even more so after they raid one of the duty-free shops for snacks, care of the stolen credit card of Elias Bouchard. Well, technically it was the institute’s card, but it brought him a special kind of joy to believe that they were committing crimes against that locked up piece of human trash. 

Or half-human trash, he considered, as they waited for their luggage by the bag return. Elias had to be marked by The Eye, just like Jon. That would explain the powers. That would explain the murders. And it would explain why he was such a nosy fucking prick. 

Now that he really thought about it, he considered just how many marked people were probably working at the institute. Everyone in the archives was marked by something, besides himself. Sasha had worked in artefact storage for years, there was no way she wasn’t marked by at least one of the more innocuous ones. Was the entire place just a nexus for weird entity behavior? Or was Elias specifically hiring people that had already been touched by the very same entities they were researching? Either option made his skin crawl, and he tries to shake the thought from his head as he helps Basira gather their suitcases. 

They struggle, for a moment, to call a cab using a traveler’s dictionary and google translate. The finer points of Norwegian sound like marbles hitting a tile floor in his regrettably accented lilt, but they finally manage it. 

The wait is such a strange, nearly normal thing that it almost feels like he’s been shunted into some liminal space. After months and months of supernatural happenings, of fighting off monsters and avatars, here he was. Sitting in an airport lounge next to his best friend, whom he used to want dead, and the girlfriend of the woman that had almost killed him. On their way to possibly prevent a psychotic cult from plunging the world into eternal night for the glory of an eldritch old god. So, maybe it wasn’t all that normal after all, but still. For him, this was about as close to a normal human experience as he was probably ever going to get again. 

The cab ride is another hour, slowly crawling through traffic on their way to the harbor. The ship they’re catching a ride on is gigantic, practically blocking the sun as its steel hull stretches across the surface of the water. Basira greets the harbormaster as he and Jon wait on the dock, in awe of the ship they’re about to board. 

“Suppose this is a bad time to mention that I can’t swim,” he admits, and Jon turns to him with the most skeptical look he’s ever seen on the man’s face. “What? It’s true.”

“You agreed to a week-long boat trip and you don’t even know how to  _ swim _ ?” 

“Well when you put it like that it makes me sound really irresponsible,” he argues, and Jon laughs and rolls his eyes. “I’m serious though, if this thing goes down, it’s gonna be up to you to drag me onto the lifeboat because I will definitely just sink.” 

“You don’t know how to tread water?” 

“I don’t even know what that means.” 

“How are you a 27-year old man that doesn’t...” Jon trails off, lost in thought for a moment before turning back to Tim, aghast. “Your birthday’s next week.” 

“My...my birthday?” He thinks, does the math. Jon’s right.

“The 22nd,” he confirms. “Tim, your birthday is  _ the day after  _ the solstice.” 

“Oh yeah. I forgot about that. I don’t really...I haven’t really celebrated my birthday in a couple years. Not really.” The only one that had been left to remember after Danny had died had been Sasha, and now she too was lost to memory. He chuckles to himself as he remembers how she’d always make fun of him about his zodiac sign. Apparently being a June Cancer made him ‘generous and creative’. He’d never really gotten into her whole astrology thing. 

“Well, we’re celebrating this year,” Jon resolves, nodding to himself. “If I have to learn how to bake the cake myself, so be it, but we  _ are _ celebrating.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many apologies for the late upload today, i am a husk of a human being and have the sleep schedule of a rabid raccoon, but!...i currently have 70 pages in the chamber to edit, so i promise i am still doing my best to get this out for y'all <3 o7


	25. ch.25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim has a series of conversations aboard a ship to Norway

“You brought WHAT through TSA?” 

They’ve just been shown their rooms; two, with a full size normal bed in each with a shared bathroom. It almost reminded Tim of his Uni accommodations, minus the ever-present creaking of metal and hum of machinery. Basira holds up one of the three expandable steel batons that they’d found when they went to unpack his suitcase, and shrugs. 

“You want to go after a killer cult empty-handed? Be my guest. But I’m not.”

“So you put them in  _ my  _ bag?” Tim complains, fixing her with an offended glare. 

“Yeah. I noticed while we were out drinking that people tend not to notice you unless you look for them first. Figured the principle would translate.” 

“You could’ve gotten me arrested!” he points out, though he can’t help but feel like he’s missing something here. “I’m pretty sure these are illegal.” 

“I put it in the checked bag, it’s perfectly legal.” She rolls her eyes at him, as if  _ he’s  _ the crazy one. “I was a police officer, I should know what is and isn’t illegal.” There’s a moment of silence as he and Jon both just look at her, incredulous, and she huffs and continues. “Just because I sometimes choose to forgo the rules doesn’t mean I’m not aware of them.” 

“I mean, hey, you said it,” Tim sighs, accepting his fate as the only sane man in this entire tragic stage play. “But I still would have preferred a heads-up. ‘Tim, I need you to carry these illegal weapons across international borders for me.’” His impression is awful, and Basira looks at him with all the exhaustion of an overworked kindergarten teacher. 

“Like I said. Not illegal. Frowned upon, but not illegal.” 

“At least it’s not a gun,” Jon adds from his seat on the bed, where he’s reading one of the paperbacks they’d picked up at the airport. 

“God forbid it was a fucking gun,” Tim answers, and he has the nerve to laugh. “Keep laughing. We’re sharing a room, and I’m not above drawing on your face in your sleep as revenge.” Jon seems to recoil at that, eyes wide with surprise. 

“We’re sharing a room?” he asks, looking between Tim and Basira, as if they’re playing an elaborate joke on him. 

“Yes?” Basira pipes up, equally as confused. “Did you really think I was going to share a room with either of you? No offense, but I’d rather sleep in the hallway if that was the case.” 

“But there’s only one bed,” he continues, as if that’s a problem. 

“Listen. I will give you an actual reason, so that your feelings aren’t hurt.” She gestures widely at her hijab, and Jon seems to calm down, just a little. 

“Right. Sometimes I forget.” 

The conversation devolves into a more generic trip discussion, and then Basira excuses herself to go unpack her own suitcase, leaving the two of them alone in the room. 

“Why’d you kick a fit over having to share a bed?” Tim asks jokingly, flopping onto the bed beside Jon, nearly knocking him over. “Embarrassed to have to associate with me in polite company?” 

“No,” Jon answers vehemently. “I just...it seemed strange to admit that it was something that we already did.” 

“Oh, the implications,” Tim realizes, “right. Just forget all that, it’ll be the same thing as our room at home. Completely and totally platonic, guaranteed.” Jon seems unhappy with that, but nods anyway. Probably just uncomfortable with the subject, Tim reasons, so he changes it. “Are you actually reading that tourist dictionary?” he asks, pointing to the book Jon had been perusing. 

“I am. I thought it might help if one of us had at least a basic understanding of how the language worked without having to look every single little thing up.” 

“You can’t learn a language in a week,” Tim points out, and Jon’s smile returns, almost challenging. 

“Det kan jeg absolutt,” he replies, though Tim can tell it’s heavily accented. “Have a little faith.” 

“Alright, alright.” He puts his hands up in surrender with a laugh. “You win. Spooky knowing powers: one. Tim Stoker’s ego: zero.” Jon laughs with him, happy to have proved him wrong. “You took your dramamine, right?” he follows up, and Jon nods. 

“Mhm. I refuse to spend half the trip leaning over the guardrail because I’m  _ seasick _ .” He says it like it’s some great flaw of character, like having a weak stomach is just as bad as committing a violent crime. 

“Pretty sure they only do that in movies,” Tim points out. “At most, you might get a little nauseous and have to lie down for a bit.” 

“Regardless, I refuse,” he answers, turning back to his book. Tim lets him read in peace, closing his eyes and letting the sway of the boat against the waveless sea rock him to sleep for a quick nap. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  


Tim wakes up to the sound of quiet sobbing in the corner of the room, looking blearily around in the dark for the source as he comes out of his post-nap haze. 

“Jon?” he calls out, and the noise gets quieter. His eyes finally adjust to the low light, and he sees him, back pressed into the corner of the room, legs drawn to his chest. “Jon, what happened?” He crosses the room as the archivist tries to hide his face, tries to hide the fact that he’s been crying. 

“I’m fine,” he argues as Tim crouches next to him. He offers a hand and Jon takes it. He helps him up and leads him back to bed, sitting down on the bedside’s edge. “I’m fine, really.” 

“You are definitely not fine,” Tim counters, not unkindly. “What happened?”

“The window,” he finally admits, finally, voice soft and reverent as he looks over the now shuttered porthole in the wall. “I looked out and there was just ocean for miles. Leagues and leagues and leagues of it, and...” he doesn’t have to finish the sentence for Tim to understand. Deep water was another domain of The Buried, of course being surrounded by it was going to activate some of that trauma. 

He reaches over and pulls Jon into a hug that he readily returns. In the dark, it almost feels like this room is their entire world. No entities, no life-threatening dangers, no saving the world. Just him and Jon and the dry ocean air. 

“You’re fine,” he soothes, as Jon clings to him. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. Not while I’m here.”

“I know,” he replies, “I know. God, I’m such a coward.” 

“A coward?” That has to be a joke. Tim finally breaks away, fixing Jon with the most skeptical look he can muster. “No. Definitely not. You’re a lot of things, not all of them good,” he accepts that as a good faith criticism, and Tim continues, “but the one thing you very much  _ aren’t  _ is a coward.” 

“In your opinion,” Jon jokes, but the implication behind it is too serious for Tim to just let slide. 

“My opinion is one of the only ones that actually matters. I know you. I know exactly what kind of person you are, and if I say you’re doing fine, then you’re just fine.” It’s exaggerated for effect, so egotistical that it makes him cringe, but it seems to make Jon feel better as he gives a self-conscious chuckle. “I’m sorry I slept through your panic attack,” he apologizes, and Jon waves him off. 

“I’ve spent my whole life trying to keep them quiet, I don’t blame you. Also, from how often you sleep through that accursed alarm clock, I’m not surprised.” That’s a direct diss, and Tim acts offended, if only for the drama of it all. 

“In my defense, I’ve had it for years now. I’m too used to it.” 

“We’ll get a new one then,” Jon counters. “Because if I have to hear it go off for five solid minutes again because you aren’t hearing it I think I’ll finally lose it.” 

“It’ll be the first purchase we make when we get back,” Tim promises, and he’s sure he has to be imagining the hopeful shine in his friend’s eyes. 

“We  _ are _ coming back, aren’t we?” 

“We are. It doesn’t matter what happens. I promise.” 

“You always keep your promises,” Jon points out.

“And I don’t intend to stop now. There are very few things I still value in this world. There’s you, my PS4, and my integrity. Which I understand seems like a bit of an undervaluation, but I fucking love that stupid console.” Jon’s face scrunches up and he dissolves into quiet laughter, dragging Tim into it with him. They’d come back. Hell or high water or eldritch entities, they  _ would _ be coming back. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  


They’re woken up by the shared bathroom door slamming open, bright light already filtering in through the slats of the porthole’s blinds. 

“Wha’ happened?” Tim grumbles, still half-asleep as a shirt hits him in the face. He quickly detangles himself from Jon, sitting upright and being faced with a very disappointed looking Basira. 

“I’ve been waiting for you two to wake up for hours now, and you’re still in here curled up like cats in the sun.” She’s obviously annoyed as Jon leans up in bed beside him, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “It’s THREE in the afternoon.”

“It’s not like we have anywhere to be,” he argues, though her expression doesn’t change. “We’re basically prisoners until this thing pulls into port. Am I not allowed to have a little lie-in?” 

“Nope. Get changed. We’re gonna go over the plan again.” And with that, she sweeps back through the bathroom, the door swiftly closing behind her. Tim grumbles some more as he puts on the shirt she’d tossed at him, getting up and looking for where he’d tossed yesterday’s jeans. He’d get ready, but he wouldn’t go through all the trouble of being presentable. 

“Who does she think she is,” he complains to Jon, still lying down with his arm over his eyes to block out the light, “the goddamn poli...well. I suppose she is. Nevermind, bad comparison.” 

“Of all the authoritarian jobs you could have gone for, you went for the one she actually had,” Jon mumbles, and Tim pulls one of his jumpers from the shelf and tosses it at him, the heavy wool making him jump. He sits up, fixing Tim with a sleepy deathglare, and then pulls it on over his pajama top. 

“It’s early, leave me alone.”

“It’s three in the afternoon.”

“And you were asleep five minutes ago too, so don’t make this out to be a me problem.” He rifles through one of their bags, pulling out a thick packet of paper and handing it to Jon. “Here, read this. You get cranky before your morning statement.” He takes it, but a horrified recognition dawns across his face so quickly that it unsettles Tim, feeling the worry build in the pit of his stomach. “What?” 

“We didn’t bring any tea.” 

“Son of a BITCH.” Tim laughs to himself, as if it’s the funniest thing in the world. “Of course! I knew we were forgetting something.” 

“I’m going to die,” Jon says very seriously. “I am going to die of caffeine withdrawal, and it is all your fault.” 

“Oh shut up. We’ve still got,” he does some mental math, “about 15 minutes before Basira rains hell on us for being late. We could go see if they have coffee in the galley.” 

“I hate coffee,” Jon pouts, now giving his statement a precursory scan. It was a long one, the statement of some nurse that worked in a London hospital and had a run in with spiders or something. Tim hadn’t looked too closely at the contents, just the length, before he’d added it to their travel bag. 

“Well, you’re going to have to live with it for the next week, at least.” He grumbles, leaving the statement on the bedside table to get dressed. 

The galley did indeed have coffee; the good kind, from the big, commercial pots that tasted vaguely like smouldering wood. Jon puts five sugars in it, and more milk than a cow produces in an entire year, and complains the entire walk back that it tastes burnt. Tim tries to tell him that that’s the whole appeal, but he doesn’t quite get it.


	26. ch.26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Jon get into (yet another) argument

Jon’s been in a mood all day. Well, he’s been in a mood for the better part of the week, but Tim had always passed it off to himself as caffeine withdrawal. After a day or two he’d given up on it entirely, content to just suffer until he could get some real tea. But now the cantankerous mood seemed to be festering, making him on edge for no reason. 

Though they split up to sleep, the trio had been spending pretty much every waking moment in the same room. The ship seemed safe enough, but if they’d learned anything from the demon that haunted the institute’s doorways like a poltergeist it was that nothing was ever as safe as it looked. 

The door is waiting, open, for Basira to come back with dinner from the galley. Assorted crew members have been walking by, giving them confused looks, as if wondering why they’re on the ship in the first place. Tim ignores them, but Jon keeps staring, as if he’s looking for someone specific. 

“Are you-” he starts, but is cut off by Jon’s gaze jumping back to the door, at the man in overalls just staring at them. His eyes are wide, afraid, as Jon waves him into the room. 

“You used to work for Salesa,” he states simply, and the man recoils. 

“Jon, what-” 

“Shh.” Tim recognizes the name. Salesa. It showed up in a bunch of the statements he’d had to investigate, some antiques dealer with a knack for finding the most absolutely cursed things on the planet and dealing them back to unsuspecting people. 

“I don’t know you,” the shiphand mutters, seemingly unable to leave. He looks like a rat with their foot caught in a glue trap. 

“But  _ I _ know  _ you _ ,” Jon continues, and the man’s eyes begin to cloud over. His expression becomes dreamlike as the sound of faint static begins to fill the room, to filter into Tim’s mind, even as he tries to fight against it. “Floyd Matharu. Served on the  _ Dorian _ from 2011 to 2014. With Salesa.” 

The man shifts again, his head tilts to the side, as if he’s unable to keep it held up properly. This didn’t seem normal. This wasn’t normal. Tim gives Jon a questioning look, but it’s like he’s forgotten he’s there, fully focused on the man in front of them. 

“ **_Tell me what happened_ ** ,” Jon compels, and something flickers behind his eyes as the man begins to speak. 

The next 10 minutes are filled with a complete retelling of his time on board the  _ Dorian _ , interspersed with that static that made Tim physically unable to think anything more than one word sentences. 

He had been a smuggler, aboard Salesa’s haunted cargo carrier, ferrying illegal goods between ports like an unknowing harbinger of death. The man espoused a strange admiration for Salesa, for the respect he seemed to treat his crew with, even in the face of his objectively terrible deeds. Salesa was honest, he says, never paid less than a fair share, and never tried to overstep his authority with the ship’s captain. 

That is, until one of the other hands had attempted to break into the cargo bay. Salesa had thrown him overboard without a second thought. 

It eventually comes out, described with working mans’ aplomb, that Salesa had sailed his last sea, dying in some strange sort of explosion during their last voyage together in 2014. Another mishap, another man thrown overboard, a drinking binge that had presumably brought about his downfall at the hands of the very artefacts he had made his living selling. It was all very neatly packaged by the time the man finished his story. No more loose ends than was usual for anything involving the mysterious entities. 

“So I jumped ship the next chance I got. And I have tried ever since then to leave those memories behind me.” The fog clears from his eyes and all at once he snaps to attention, looking at Jon with a horrified frown. 

“That’s all, Floyd. You’ve been very helpful.”

“I...what just...”

“You just need a break. Perhaps you should go have a lie down,” Jon entreats, and the man nods, wandering back out the door as the static begins to fade. Tim follows him, closing the door quietly before rounding on Jon.

“What the fuck did you just do?” he hisses, and Jon has the nerve to seem blasé about the whole thing, as if it’s just another Wednesday. 

“He had information on Salesa. I thought it might help,” he says simply, as if that explains everything, or even anything at all. 

“Is that why we’re stuck on this rusty boat? Because you wanted to...to do whatever THAT was?” 

“I had a hunch.” 

“Jon,” Tim tries to calm down, tries to be as rational as possible about the situation. “Did you just sip a memory from that man’s head like a goddamn Icee?” 

“Basira warned me that I should be ‘ready for anything’. Does this not count?” If Tim cared even a tiny bit less about the man than he did, he would have slapped him right then and there. 

“What on god’s earth are you talking about? Explain it to me. NOW.” 

“Some people don’t want to give statements. I have the power to...encourage them.” That’s not it. He can tell from the look on his face that that’s not the full story, so he waits, crossing his arms over his chest in frustration before Jon continues, guiltily. “And then they’re cursed with worsened nightmares. For...probably the rest of their lives.”

“How many times have you done this?”

“A few,” he answers, evasively. 

“A ‘few’.”

“I just think that Gertrude makes some solid points!” he argues, referring to the old tapes he’d been listening to during the trip here. “We can’t save everyone from every little bit of harm. Sometimes it’s necessary to-” Tim silences him with a single hand gesture, trying desperately to keep his rage well contained. 

“You are  _ not _ Gertrude. You are  _ not _ the arbiter of people’s fates. And I will absolutely  _ not  _ let you become one of the things that’s rotting this world from the inside out.” Jon stares at him, ready to argue his points the second Tim stops talking. 

“You could have stopped me,” he points out, and Tim shakes his head vehemently. 

“Not with all that static filling my head,” he spits, and Jon seems almost taken aback. 

“You can hear that?” 

“Of course I can hear it! Blanks my brain out. I can’t even get a good thought in while it’s going.” 

“You shouldn’t be able to. Tim, this is a problem-”

“No, what’s a problem is the fact that you’ve been feasting on people’s memories like it’s a noontime snack,” he reiterates. “You have to understand how fundamentally fucked up that is.”

“I do, but what other choice do we have?” 

“Not that one,” Tim decides. “You’re going to stop doing it. Today. And if I find out about any more cases of whatever weird black magic this is, I’m going to be more than just upset. Is that clear?” He fixes a petulant Jon with a withering glare as he avoids eye-contact. 

“You’ve made your point,” he finally says, as a complete non-answer. 

“No. You’re gonna promise me,” he pushes. “You’re gonna swear on whatever’s most important to you that you will not take another statement against someone’s will.” 

“I swear on my life that I will not take any more statements.” Tim shakes his head. 

“Not good enough, you don’t care enough about your own life for that to be contractually binding. Swear on Martin’s life.” Jon goes through a rollercoaster of emotions all in the span of a moment, before finally settling on hurt defiance. 

“Tim-”

“You want your promises to mean something? Put your money where your goddamn mouth is.” 

“...I swear on Martin Blackwood’s life that I will not draw out any more statements unless it is a matter of life and death.” It’s still somewhat a cop-out, but Tim sighs and nods, anger finally dissipating as the door behind him swings open. 

“Did I miss something?” Basira asks, holding a bag full of galley meals for their dinner. The two men share a look, wordlessly communicating the plan, before Tim turns back to her, giving her what he hopes is a reassuring smile. 

“Nope, just a little fight about me forgetting to pack the tea. They’ve only got coffee onboard and Jon’s sick of it already.” It’s not exactly an outright falsehood, but it is a lie of omission, and Tim feels a little bad about it. Basira seems to buy it though, just fixing him with a confused look as they gather around for dinner. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  


“You are  _ terrifying  _ when you’re angry, you know that?” Jon asks him later that night, as they’re getting ready for bed. 

“I’ve been told so, yeah,” he admits, thinking back to all the times during their childhood that Danny had complained to their mother that he was being ‘too mean’ to the neighbor kids. Of course, he was too young to realize that Tim was actually eviscerating the ones that said rude things about him behind his back, but that information was a secret he’d take to his presumably early grave. “I’m trying to keep it in check.”

“I know you are. And...for what it’s worth, I appreciate it.” Tim smiles at him, saddened at just how low his standards were for how other people should treat him. 

“Of course. I said I would, and so I will.” 

“You don’t  _ have _ to,” Jon starts, and Tim cuts him off before he can even begin the descent into a self-deprecating anxiety spiral. 

“I don’t have to. But I want to. Good people should be treated good, and you’re good people, so...that made me sound stupid, didn’t it?” 

“A bit. Pretty sure it’s ‘treated well’, but it’s the sentiment behind it that matters,” Jon reaffirms with a grateful smile. 

“I majored in literature, too,” he laughs. “I graduated with a goddamn FIRST. From Holloway, no less! You’d think I’d be able to string a few monosyllabic words together.” 

“It’s charming,” Jon consoles him innocently, though for some strange reason it makes his heart leap into his throat. 

“Well, I’m glad you think so.” He yawns into the crook of his arm, blinking his building exhaustion away. “God, I cannot wait to be off this boat.”

“Two days,” Jon confirms, and he sighs. “Let’s hope we’ve just wasted time going on a little vacation, and that we’re not actively walking in on yet another world-ending scenario.”

“I truly don’t think my nerves would be able to take it,” he jokes, shutting off the light and then climbing into bed. The sound of the waves is loud tonight, sloshing against the side of the ship with comforting regularity. Tim holds Jon a little closer to him, to try and mitigate the fear that he’d already expressed for the open ocean all around them. But, it seems he’s worrying for nothing, as they both drift off without any further problems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> figure ill put this update here instead of the big end-of-work note: i finished the entire 2nd arc and planning per chapter for the final one last night, so at least the actual writing aspect of this WILL be finished by the finale.   
> (it will also probably not be canon compliant, by way of trying to make it happier; and if the actual ending of the podcast turns out to be less melancholy than what i have planned out after so many weeks of them preparing us for a tragedy i will SCREAM)


	27. ch.27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim has an NDE

“Are you absolutely sure it’s this building?” Tim whispers, a bit louder than was probably necessary, and Jon and Basira both shoot him a glare. “Right. Semi-omnipotent boss and Britain’s top tracker on the case. Dumb question.” 

It was 9 o’clock and the sun was still hanging low in the sky, illuminating the admittedly very culty-looking building that they were currently casing. 

“You’re sure we’re alone?” Basira asks, and Jon shakes his head. 

“I never said we were alone, I just said I didn’t see anyone.” 

“I thought you said you didn’t  **see** anyone,” Tim tries to correct, sure that he’d heard that weird lilt to the word. 

“Be more clear next time.” Basira cuts off the argument before it can start, clicking on her flashlight and trying the door. It’s unlocked, swinging right open as the three of them look at each other with shared suspicion. “Alright, c’mon, eyes peeled.” 

“Was that a joke?” Tim’s never been more proud in his life. “Never thought I’d see the day.” 

“Amended: eyes peeled and shut up.” They creep into the darkened research center, Basira leading at first point, shining their only light around at the empty lab. There’s equipment Tim’s sure costs more than his mortal life is worth sitting on every surface, coated in a thick film of dust and grime. “Trap?” 

“I agree. This place smacks of ambush,” Tim warns, as they approach the door on the far side. 

“The researchers back at the commune were pretty sure it was empty,” Jon reassures, shooting a glance at Tim, the flashlight reflecting off his glasses. 

“Do you know that or do you  **know** it?” 

“Regular know.” So he hadn’t taken the information then. Good. 

“It’s supposed to have been empty for the better part of a year. More than that, even. Are we even sure there’s anything here?” Tim peers through the window in the door as Basira shines the light through the other side. It looks like a decontamination chamber, but every single thing inside is made from black material that seems to absorb the light. Everything except the floor, also covered in dust save for a trail of footprints leading to the very door they were peering through. Tim’s hand tightens around the baton in his jacket pocket as he throws out his other arm, moving Jon behind him as he turns. 

“Basi-” he starts to yell, before his head is sent spinning by the sound of a gunshot right next to him. There’s a yelp of pain, the sound of someone hitting the ground,  _ hard _ . The flashlight’s bulb bursts, light level dropping to next to nothing.

“Gotcha,” she taunts, sounding very proud of herself. 

“Is that a fucking gun?! Did you manage to get a fucking gun through international customs?! What the fuck!” 

“Interrogate me later,” she responds, rounding the lab table with the 9mm pointed squarely at the writhing shape on the ground. “Don’t move!” she commands. 

As his eyes adjust, Tim finally sees just who her target was. She was a mousy little thing, couldn’t be more than 5ft tall, with long black hair that reminded him of Samara from The Ring. She’s clutching her thigh, blood spurting out of a hole in her jeans and creating a puddle under her. He raises the baton, not really sure how much more threatening they could be. They’d already shot her, for fucks sake. The woman looks at Basira with utmost contempt, spitting at her like some sort of trapped animal. 

“Charming,” he jokes, opinion of her already soured. Basira, without looking, takes the baton from his grip, flicking it open and handing it back to him. “Oh, so that’s how you do it.” 

“Who are you?” Basira hisses, gun still aimed directly at the woman’s head. 

“Fuck you,” is the only response. 

“ **_Who are you?_ ** ” Tim had almost forgotten Jon was here. The woman inhales deeply, whines like she’s struggling to fight something off as Jon peeks out from behind Basira’s shoulder. There’s a brief bout of static as their target convulses, trying to fight the compulsion off. 

“Manuela,” she growls through gritted teeth. “Manuela Dominguez.” 

“Where is everybody?” Basira asks, and Dominguez just sneers at her. 

“Go to hell, Artemis.”

“ **_Answer._ ** ” Dominguez convulses again, the static growing louder the harder she tries to resist it. 

“They’re dead. Because of  _ you _ .” She’s looking right at Jon. Tim gives him a doubly dubious glare, for both himself and Basira. 

“No. Not me.” He seems very adamant about it. 

“Your Institute,” Dominguez continues, voice practically dripping with pure, venomous hatred. The room goes silent as they all wait for her to elaborate, but of course she doesn’t. 

“What?” It doesn’t matter who says it, since they’re all thinking it. 

“She sent you to finish the job? Couldn’t even be arsed to do it herself.” 

“Who on god’s green earth are you talking about?” Tim finally snaps, holding the baton under her chin like a sword, forcing her to look at them. 

“Your Archivist-”

“I-” Jon starts to defend himself as she continues. 

“Gertrude Robinson.” That can’t be right. That  _ can’t  _ be right. Could it?

“Gertrude Robinson was a 75 year old woman,” Basira explains. “So let’s try that again. Jon?” 

“ _ What happened _ ?” The static grows to a fever pitch again as Dominguez tenses, joints audibly cracking under the pressure of resistance. 

“Don’t make me. Please don’t make me!” 

“ **_Tell us. Now._ ** ”

“Fine! Fine.” The static begins to fade away, replaced by silence and pained breathing as Dominguez is released from the compulsion. Or submits to it. He wasn’t really sure how the whole thing worked. 

And thus begins the sordid tale of The People’s Church of the Divine Host. Of Maxwell Rayner, The Dark’s favored avatar. The years and years of preparation, the creation of something she calls the Dark Star. Something about an eclipse and Hailey’s comet and human sacrifices. The details were a little hard to iron out. 

There had apparently been a grand ritual circle with Ny-Alesund as its apex, headed by Rayner himself. Something about a beast made from darkness that they had slaughtered and drunk the blood from. It all seemed a little too macabre for an actual ritual, like something from a horror film, but he’s sure that it’s the truth. The compulsion would allow no less. 

She opines on and on about the holiness of the darkness, about how their cult wished to find sanctuary in the lightless world brought about by their entity. It all gets a bit preachy after a while, but still she continues. 

She mentions the Montauks, that serial killer and his insane huntress daughter. Someone had crossed one of them and met their grisly and untimely end. And then, so did the rest of the Church. Ritual circles around the globe fizzled out, plunged into a different kind of darkness than the one they had been seeking to find solace in. They’d tried the centerpiece ritual anyway, making sacrifices until the moment when it all just...stopped. 

The Dark retreated, leaving its followers emptied and hollow in the wake of their failures. They weren’t ‘worthy’. In-fighting began, those that had sacrificed everything and more, only to be denied at the final moment turning on each other in their hour of grief. 

Rayner tried to find a successor. A desperate plan to kidnap a Dark marked child. The kind of 11th hour Hail Mary that always ends up making a fool out of someone. And that too, had failed. And so Dominguez had stayed. The final guardian of Rayner’s life’s work, the arbiter of the Dark Star.

“And here, at last, you are.” She sighs, her story told in full even as her leg continues to bleed. “Now you can kill me like the others.” 

“Is that all true?” Basira asks, and Jon shrugs. 

“Everything said under my compulsions has been accurate so far. This would fit the pattern.” He ponders for a moment, makes a confused sound. “But it doesn’t make sense.” 

“Where is she?” Dominguez spits angrily. “Afraid to face what she’s done?” 

“Can you shut up?” Basira growls back, much more intimidating, but still the Dark’s final servant doesn’t back down. 

“Coward. So how’d she do it?” She’s smirking cruelly now, dragging her injured leg and leaving a smear of blood in the dust. “I’ve been waiting on this frozen rock for three years. At least do me the courtesy of telling me  _ how  _ she collapsed our moment of triumph.” 

“You don’t know?” Jon asks, not unkindly, and her gaze snaps to him, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. 

“Know what?” 

“Gertrude Robinson is dead. Died around the same time your ritual was taking place.” Dominguez smirks, suddenly filled with obvious pride, even staring down the barrel of a gun. 

“Stopping us took everything she had, eh?” 

“Actually, our boss brutally murdered her with a pipe. Entirely unrelated, it seems,” Tim offers. 

“The brutal pipe murder was Leitner. He shot Gertrude,” Basira corrects. 

“Oh yeah. Honestly it’s hard to keep all of Elias’s murders strai-”

“Why are you here?” That’s Dominguez again. Her eyes are now wide with fear and confusion, staring at them with abject dismay. “Maxwell is dead. The ritual failed. What’s left?” 

“I mean, there’s the star thing. That seems like the kind of world ending threat that we usually like to eliminate.” Tim finally lowers the baton, keeping it in a tight grip at his side, just in case she decides to try something. 

“It would annihilate you in an instant,” she spits again, some of her fire returning. 

“Is that true, Jon?” he waits for a response and receives none. “Jon?” He turns around just as the door to that strange decontamination chamber swings shut. “Jon!” 

Tim trusts Basira to have things under control. He sprints into the airlock, pulling on the opposite side’s door just as it locks in place, all his effort not budging it a single bit. He pounds on the all-black door as hard as he can, all the while still trying to pull it open. 

“JON!” 

He’s hit with a blast of static so intense that his vision wobbles and he has to slump against the door to keep from passing out entirely. It fills every crevice of his mind, obliterating every thought, every memory, every opinion, feeling, and physical sensation. He thinks he’s going to die. This is it. He’d made it this far just to die to psychic damage friendly fire. What a way to go out. 

And then all at once it stops. In the wake of it there’s more gunshots, screaming, the sound of a pursuit. Tim doesn’t have the energy to give chase, himself. He’s barely back on his feet, clutching his migraine-riddled head, as Jon walks back through the door casually, as if coming back from the supermarket. 

“Where’s Basira?” he asks, and Tim has half a mind to lock him in here and leave him. 

“What did you do?” he questions, mind still hazy. Jon pulls an arm around his shoulders, letting him lean against him as he tries to catch his breath. 

“I destroyed it. Or...absorbed it? Not really sure. Tim, where’s-” 

“Looking for your dear friend Basira?” comes a familiar voice as the bright purple door to their left swings open and out walks...a woman? Or at least a feminine presenting humanoid. She looks relatively normal, except for the fact that the colors of her smart pantsuit seem to be made entirely out of fractals. Were fractals even a color? Did that count?

“Helen?” 

“Hello Archivist!” she greets brightly, smile too wide, too narrow, too filled with teeth. “And Archivist’s assistant.”

“You look different,” Tim points out, still woozy. She seems pleased, giving her bright fractal sundress a nauseating little twirl. 

“Do you like it? I’m not much attached to your mortal concept of gender, but I do quite like looking pretty.” She smooths down her pleated skirt with another grin. 

“Where’s Basira?” Jon questions, and Helen laughs, haunting, too full, too hollow, half-empty.

“She needed a door. I provided one.” She sighs, probably at Jon’s horrified expression, and continues, “The tall one is waiting for you outside. I’m keeping her busy with a little...light show, shall we say.” 

“How did you find us?” Jon asks, and Helen shrugs, asymmetrical jumper falling lower on her shoulder. 

“Oh, finding this place was  _ easy _ without all that nasty darkness. I’ll be keeping the small one, by the way. She’s got  _ spirit _ . A good can-do attitude.” She giggles again, childish, ancient, wrong. “She’s going to be very fun to break.” 

“Why?” 

“Why not? I told you, I’ve decided to  _ help _ .” She gestures back towards her bright purple door. “Would you like a way home?” 

“What’s it going to cost us?” Tim can barely believe their luck. Of course, they were literally dealing with the embodiment of lies, so this could all go very south very quickly. 

“We’ll consider the terms even. You’ve brought me a nice new pet, after all.” She turns to Jon, head tilting too far to the side. “How was it?” 

“I thought I was going to die.” 

“Bastard,” Tim interjects, and Helen snorts before clapping her hands together in glee. 

“Right! Let’s get you your huntress, and then get you home. Should make it back just in time for tea.” 

“It’s 9pm.”

“Time is such an irrelevant thing,” she waves the thought away. “Shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i thought about saving this quote for the end of arc notes, but it really explains just what my thought process is with these characters even now, and it fits with this chapter, so...here ya go: 
> 
> "We make these ridiculous idols so we can pray to what's behind them, but what happens after we get up the ladder? Do we simply stare at what's horrible and forgive it?" -Richard Siken, Snow and Dirty Rain
> 
> in a softer world, i'd like to say yes, we would forgive. not forget, but forgive.


	28. ch.28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Jon celebrate his birthday

They’d stepped through the door, Basira in tow, right out into the archival assistants’ office. It shuts behind them with a haunting click as Daisy stares at them from her desk. 

“Uh...hello. Mind telling us what time it is?” Jon greets her as she stands, immediately looking at Basira. They meet halfway, and Daisy pulls her into a long hug, clutching her as if she thought she’d never see her again. Tim checks his phone, surprised that it’s still working despite the time-negative space they’d just passed through. Ah, the wonders of modern technology. 

“It’s 6pm. Tomorrow.” He considers for a moment. “Today? The 22nd,” he finally settles on. Jon blinks, taken aback, and then turns to him with his ‘you’re not going to like this’ face. “What?”

“Well, for one, I just realized we left the luggage at the commune in Norway.”

“Oh goddamnit. My favorite hoodie was in that bag. Do you think they’d be willing to mail it back?” 

“For two,” Jon continues, as if he hadn’t heard, “It’s the 22nd.”

“Yes, it is,” Tim confirms, confused. 

“It’s your birthday.” 

“So it is. I don’t-” he stops mid thought, remembering. “Basira!” She turns, finally letting Daisy go. “You smuggled a fucking gun into my luggage!”

“And I was smart enough to smuggle it back  _ out _ of your luggage before you managed to see it.” She seems very proud of herself. 

“What were the batons for, then?”

“A distraction. For you two.” She waits for him to understand, and then sighs when he doesn’t, explaining, “You were so preoccupied with them that you didn’t even consider what else I might have snuck in. Classic bait-and-switch.”

“Was it really necess-”

“Would you rather have faced an unknown threat with nothing but our bare hands?” He says nothing, because she’s right and she knows it. “That’s what I thought.” 

“I’m pretty sure that’s a tactic they use on dogs,” Jon adds, ‘helpfully’. Heavy, sarcastic quotations implied. 

“To use our favorite phrase, that sounds like a  _ you _ problem,” Daisy quips, and Tim throws his hands up in frustration. 

“Everyone’s a comedian today! Yesterday? Conglomerate amount of time equaling one very stupid Norway trip.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

They make sure that nothing is amiss in the building, Basira doing a careful sweep while Tim walks behind her, admittedly unhelpfully, munching on the box of macarons he’d found on his desk. He thought it was very nice of Daisy to both remember that he liked them, and to get him a few as a birthday gift. She’d even wrapped them up all nice with silver ribbon. Or, at least he assumed it was Daisy. Who else could it have been? Certainly wasn’t Melanie, and she was the only other one with access to the office. Either way, they were very tasty. 

After confirming the absence of abnormal spooky behavior (aside from all the  _ regular  _ spooky behavior), he and Jon say their goodbyes and take the tube home. After travelling countless miles through an extra dimensional doorway it felt good to be using solid, trackable transport again. They argue at their stop because Jon wants him to go home first while he runs some vague errand that he refuses to elaborate on, and eventually Tim concedes.

The flat is just as they’d left it, albeit with a thin coat of dust that makes Tim nervous for obvious, recent trauma related reasons. He breaks out the duster, giving at least the living room and kitchen counter a good sweep so that it would be presentable when Jon got home from...whatever he was doing. For some reason, being separated was making Tim anxious. Was he alright? Had something snatched him off the street on his way home? Maybe he should call, it couldn’t hurt. 

Just as he’s about to call in an amber alert, he hears the sound of a key turning in the lock. Jon appears from behind the door, balancing a large, square box that he quickly sets down on the counter. 

“What’s that?” Tim asks, leaning over the kitchen counter to peer at the label. It reads ‘Araneae Family Bakery’ in bright pastel letters. “You didn’t.”

“I did.” Jon opens the lid, revealing a nice New York style cheesecake with a single birthday candle sitting unlit in the center. 

“I could literally kiss you right now.” He means it in a fun, ‘you’re the best’ way. Totally platonic, no other meaning to it at all, ever. 100%. He pretends not to notice Jon’s half-blush. “You’re not gonna try to sing, are you?”

“Oh absolutely not.” Jon seems aghast at the very concept itself. He seems to remember something, and then lifts his elbow, revealing a bag hanging off of it. 

“What’s that?” Tim tries to retain focus, but his hand is already reaching for the plate cabinet. 

“Alarm clock,” he replies simply, setting it on the far side of the counter. “You said that when we got back I could buy us a new one.” Tim gives up. He retrieves a pair of plates and forks, and a knife to slice the cake with. 

“Wow, you really hate that thing, huh?” he chuckles, portioning out two good sized slices and plating them. 

“You have  _ no idea _ ,” Jon quips, as Tim slides him his plate. They each pick up a bite, clinking forks together like they’re toasting with champagne glasses. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

They stand at the counter together, enjoying the cake in silent satisfaction. It was the best damn cheesecake that Tim had ever tasted. He puts their plates in the sink, to be washed later, and slides the cake box onto the empty middle shelf of the fridge. When he turns back, Jon is staring at him, as if he’s trying to  **know** something. 

“What?” 

“You can hear The Eye.” It’s more statement than question, and that’s great, because Tim has no idea how he would even begin to answer. “The static. You can hear it.” 

“Suppose so,” he shrugs. “Can’t everyone?”

“No. No, they very much can’t.” He ponders it for a moment, tapping a finger to his jaw as if that will speed up the thought process. “Can you also hear the tape recorders?” 

“Excuse me, the  _ what _ ?” Jon seems even more confused as Tim immediately invalidates whatever theory he might have been constructing. 

“The tape recorders. That follow us around. And show up wherever we are. You’ve had to have seen at least one.” His eyes narrow, he frowns, as Tim remains silent. “Surely not.” 

“This is literally the first I’m hearing about this,” he confirms, now starting to become a little concerned, himself. “Are you telling me that tape recorders have been randomly materializing around us and I just happened to  _ not notice _ ?” Jon just nods. “And nobody thought to tell me?”

“We’ve all discussed it among ourselves.” 

“And left me out?” Even beyond the horrifying implications of being followed by extra-dimensional tape recorders, he’s a little miffed that they’ve excluded him from their workplace gossip. 

“I think we all assumed you knew,” Jon admits, seeming very unsettled. “It’s been happening for months now.” 

“Wait, hold on, before we get all manic over it,” Tim tries to reason, spinning the threads of his logic into a neat web. “They haven’t been appearing in the flat, right?”

“No, not yet.” 

“So that explains it. It’s the same reason why I don’t dream anymore.” He’s surely cracked it, it was the only reason that made sense. “The Eye has some kind of weird blind spot around you that makes me immune by proxy. Can't see into itself, maybe? And they show up at the office because that’s...its domain? Knowledge for the sake of it, despite the consequences and all that.” 

“Explain the static, then,” Jon counters, and he has to think a little harder to fit that into his tidy theory. 

“Dunno. Exposure therapy? The more someone interacts with an avatar the more hold their patron has over them? That’s probably why I can remember Martin sometimes without seeing him.” That last sentence jumps out, almost without him noticing, and certainly not as a thought he’d had organically. Jon manages to look somehow both distraught and confused at the same time. 

“You  _ remember  _ him?” he shouts, at the same time that Tim yells “Did you just  _ compel  _ me?” 

“No!” Again, in unison and equally as aghast with each other. Tim shakes his head, holding up a now stress-jittering hand. 

“Me first. I don’t remember him. Not...consciously. I don’t know why I just said that.”

“Well, is it true?” 

“I...I don’t know. Is it?” 

“Now you’re  _ asking  _ me to compel you? You were just angry because you thought I had!” 

“Circumstances have changed!” Tim yells, just a bit too loudly, making Jon flinch. “Fuck, I’m sorry. Yes. I am giving you full permission, this once. I need to know.” Jon gives him a skeptical look, and then closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. 

“ **_Tell me everything you remember about Martin Blackwood._ ** ” Tim doesn’t try to resist, and the words begin to rush from him like a dam breaking open. 

“He’s 6’6” and blonde, with wire rimmed glasses. He likes green tea, one spoon of sugar, no milk. His favorite food is macarons and his favorite poet is Keats. He...” there’s a pulling the back of his mind, as if something is being dredged up from a deep pit. “He helped me set up the tapes. When you were lost in the coffin. He was the first one to visit you in the hospital. He was there when that Meat Thing attacked us. He was the one we sent to distract Elias so that Melanie could raid his office. His...oh no. Jon, his  _ mother _ died recently. I don’t...I don’t know how I know any of that, but I do.” 

He finally looks up, expecting to see understanding, and maybe a little pity, plastered across Jon’s face. Instead, he gets a resolute blankness, tinged with betrayal.

“Jon, I-” 

“I’m going to bed. Don’t bother me.” Each word is cold and calculated, with not even the barest hint of sympathy. Even his eyes are filled with blank apathy as he turns away, toward the hall. 

“Don’t do this,” Tim whispers, still too shocked at his own recollections to chase after him as the bedroom door slams shut. He stands there, for a long while, wondering if this was the beginning of the end for his new semi-perfect life. 

Things had been going so well, he opines to himself, as he washes the dishes. A minimal amount of Old God fuckery, a larger than average amount of slightly paranoia-filled, but ultimately contented bliss. It was the happiest he’d been since Danny died.

The thought sticks in his head, even as he lays on the couch, staring at the ceiling as if the badly painted stucco will deliver an answer to him. He can’t sleep, has been trying for hours, but it just keeps eluding him. Honestly, he’s not even sure it can be considered ‘eluding’. He and that great demon, Sleep, might as well be on different fucking continents. This sucks. This  _ really _ fucking sucks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nothing is more humbling than googling simply "spider" with no further context at 4 in the goddamn morning. anyway, did you know that most spiders belong to the Araneae order in classical taxonomy? just a fun fact for those of ya that read my notes o7


	29. ch.29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Jon's fight gets resolved

The first thing Tim hears is the sound of a foghorn going off in the other room. It’s enough to jolt him so violently from his precarious sleeping position on the couch that he tumbles to the floor with a big, loud crash. It takes him a second to get his bearings. Why was he sleeping on the couch? Why did he feel so tired? And why on earth was that thing still going? 

He walks to the bedroom door, almost turning the knob before he stops, remembering. Right. Last night. His hand recoils from the knob as he gathers his wounded pride, the whole time that awful alarm still blaring. He goes back to the living room, sits back down on the couch, and simply decides to ignore it. Jon would wake up soon enough, and if he was willing to talk things out then they would, but Tim wasn’t going to be the one to apologize for something that wasn’t even his fault. 

So he boots up his console. Installs a system update. Installs a  _ game _ update. Has to wiggle the cable for the external hard drive for a solid 3 minutes until it finally stays in the one position it works in. Has to update the system AGAIN. And finally boots up Assassin’s Creed. And the fucking alarm is STILL GOING. 

Just as he’s about to go mad and toss the thing out the bloody window, it stops. There’s a moment of silence, and then the bedroom door swings open slowly and Jon’s eye peers out from behind it. It just as quickly shuts again, which is no great loss to Tim at this point. He’s just wondering when exactly the other shoe was going to drop, seeing as Jon was fully content to hold it over his head indefinitely. 

It’s another 15 minutes and a slice of leftover birthday cake for breakfast before the door finally opens again. Jon walks into the kitchen, tries to say something, and thinks better of it. Tim slides the plate of cake he’d put aside for him toward him, wordlessly, and then goes right back to pretending he doesn’t exist. Jon takes the plate to the couch, eating in silence as Tim washes his own plate and returns, taking a seat right next to him. He picks up his controller and starts to play, undeterred by Jon’s presence at his side. 

It’s well into the afternoon by the time the first word is uttered by either of them. Jon’s been watching his game for hours now, usual complaints or requests to put on Netflix temporarily on hold due to the giant metaphorical brick wall he’d built between them. 

“What happened?” Tim finally asks, and Jon huffs, crossing his arms and looking anywhere but at him. 

“I took something that was empirically not your fault, and that you, too, were suffering because of, and blamed you for it. Which is the exact thing that I used to hate when you did it to me.” 

“Yep. Bit of a hypocrite, aren’t ya?” 

“In my defense, it was your bit first, I just cribbed it.” The absolute audacity this man had to make a JOKE during the biggest argument they’d ever had. And a factually correct one, at that.

“Well stop it. I hate when you remind me of...well, myself, I guess.”

“Past self, maybe,” Jon adds. There’s a pause, where neither of them really knows what to say, and then he continues, “I really am sorry. I hope you’re not still angry with me.” It’s so much of a confusing statement that Tim has to pause the game, setting down the controller as if it had burned him. 

“I’m sorry, you think  _ I’m  _ angry with  _ you _ ?” 

“Are you...not?” Now they’re both confused. 

“I mean. A little. I kind of knew what I was in for when I invited you to live with me, so I’m not blindsided by it. But you STORMED off last night. You made me sleep on the  _ couch _ . I thought it was DONE. Over in its entirety.” 

“You thought I was going to kick you out?” It sounds as if the idea has never even crossed his mind. “You do understand that you literally pay the rent, right?”

“Maybe! I- wait a second, I’ve been paying the rent this entire time?” Jon nods slowly, as if he’s stated the obvious. 

“I’ve been paying for all the utilities,” he offers, and Tim shrugs. 

“Alright, fair. But yeah, I considered it. I dunno, at the time it seemed plausible.” 

“No, no, no. Never,” Jon emphasizes, a certain softness to his voice that Tim has never heard before. “You are, unfortunately, stuck with me.” 

“And  _ you’re  _ stuck with  _ me _ ,” Tim counters, and for the first time all day, Jon smiles. “So now that that’s done,” he picks his controller back up, displaying it like a Price Is Right model, “As penance for being an asshole, would you like to attempt to play some video games for my amusement? Watching you struggle to figure out which button is L3 would bring me enough joy to consider forgiving you.” 

“Tim, my hand-eye coordination-” he tries to argue. 

“I have the original Bioshock. Since you liked Infinite enough to fucking quote it at me,” he jokes, and Jon makes that perfect ‘my past actions have come back to haunt me in the most annoying way possible’ scowl. “It’s got an underwater satirization of a Randian Objectivist society. With well formed critiques,” he entices. “And it’s got a bunch of audio logs for your sick little Beholding brain worms to feast on.” 

“...let me see the title screen and then I’ll decide.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++  
  


There’s a letter on Jon’s desk. He and Tim just stare at it in cautious silence. The envelope itself is plain manila, with no return address and the archives’ address printed in near perfect block capitals. The image on the stamp depicts an old woodcut lithograph of a spider. 

“Should we...” the oppressive July humidity is present, even now, as a visible shiver goes down Jon’s spine as he even considers opening the thing. He had some weird hatred of spiders, Tim remembered, and it seemed to run  _ deep  _ into his psyche. 

“Well it’s obviously The Web, right?” he tries to confirm. “I mean, there’s a fucking arachnid on the stamp, if there was anything else that would be such a tasteless bait and switch.” He’s trying to joke away his own fear, to make Jon laugh in the process, but both of them are so unnerved that the jokes just aren’t landing. He carefully picks up the envelope, examining the perfectly glued seal. “Perfectionists, aren’t they?” 

Jon says nothing, just looking at him until he finally sighs, ripping into the thing and hoping that it’s not laced with cosmic deity anthrax or something equally as bullshit. But it’s just a normal manila envelope, thick paper tearing neatly to reveal a thick packet of papers. Tim recognizes the format. It’s a statement. 

“Statement of Annabelle Cane,” he reads, dread creeping into his voice and only increasing as Jon wordlessly takes the paper from him, staring almost  _ through _ it. He sees the Eye’s compulsion overtake him, voice nearly forced from him as he begins to read.

Annabelle Cane does not believe in free will. That’s the only way that Tim can describe the point of her statement. Humans are simple animals that think themselves smarter than the others, never considering that they too may be lower on the food chain than something else. Something bigger, metaphorically, than they are, that controls their every living moment. 

If humanity could truly understand the repercussions of their choices, to see what effect they would have before they carried them out, then free will would be simple predestination. The more knowledge a person has, the less free will they have because they understand the gravity of their actions. 

She mentions that she’s been watching, giving Jon and his erstwhile crew of attempted world-savers a few pushes in the right direction. She likes to be helpful, she says, as long as it’s within what The Web demands of her. But she reiterates that everything that has happened has been the product of choice. Perhaps not free will in the traditional sense, but because of the choices of Jon and those around him. His accolades are his own, the credit for disarming the rituals was theirs. But she brings into question just  _ why _ they were chosen in the first place. 

And then, as is tradition, they are regaled with Annabelle’s life story. The preceding incident, replete with track-marked Arachne, weaving her own tendons into new flesh for what was presumably a giant meat spider that lived on the ceiling of an abandoned chip shop. Y’know, just normal childhood experiences. 

That childhood fear of spiders was what led her to volunteer for the college experiment, which is a story that Tim is not privy to, but that makes Jon’s eyes widen with understanding and recognition as he continues to read. 

She wonders if that, too, was a result of her own choices, or if her encounter with The Web was preordained, if she never had a chance at escaping a fate that had already been decided for her long before she was even a concept being dreamed up in the waiting room of the universe. She paints what she calls “The Mother of Puppets” as a static figure. Much like the end, she theorizes that The Web is content to let society do it’s work for it. People will always fear being manipulated by others, even if it doesn’t occur, and so The Web is always fed, in the end. 

Or maybe she’s lying. Maybe she’s made the entire thing up as a way to manipulate Jon into doing her bidding for the fate of her entity. He has no way to be certain, as she once again brings up the concerning blind spots that sometimes occur in his  **knowing** . She warns them to look no further into Hilltop Road. The letter was a courtesy to the friend of a colleague, she implies ominously, but she wasn’t above getting her hands dirty should they decide to disobey her wishes and interfere with the events that surround the house with the broken oak tree. 

“ _ Don’t  _ even think about going to Hilltop Road,” Jon finally finishes, vague static from the self-compulsion fading out. “And say hello to my little spiderling for me. I look forward to one day meeting them.” The very energy of the room is tense as Jon lowers the statement to his desk. 

“What the actual fuck does that mean?” Tim finally asks, and Jon just shakes his head. 

“I have no earthly idea.” He considers for a moment, crossing his hands in front of him as Tim waits for his encyclopedic knowledge to kick in. “But I’m not all that worried about it.” 

“You’re not  _ worried  _ about the fact that she essentially just implied that there’s a Web mole working in our office? Or that she threatened us from staying away from a location with constantly active supernatural nonsense? Does that not sound like the set-up for a hidden ritual?” Jon has lost his goddamn mind if he thinks this isn’t a problem. It is in fact, MANY problems, all tied together with a neat, cobweb printed bow. 

“I...I believe her. About the Mother of Puppets being an inactive force. If that’s the case then The Web would never have the need to even conceptualize a ritual. It would function more like The End. Passively receiving all the suffering that comes with modern society. It gets its dues, always. It’s...it’s happy with the world just the way it is.” 

“And so we just let it, what? Do its thing? Continue to fuck with us? Just because someone claims they want to help, doesn’t mean they actually want to help.” He remembers that technicolor demon that sometimes haunts their doorways and cringes. “I mean, Jesus, shouldn’t we at least come up with a backup plan? Just in case something actually does happen?” 

Jon sighs, and Tim finally notices the dark bags under his eyes, the slight shake to his hands as he takes off his glasses, letting them hang on the chain around his neck. He looks exhausted, drained, even though Tim knows they’d gone to bed early last night. 

“I just don’t have the energy, alright? I am starving The Eye by not taking statements,” he references the promise he’d made while they were on board the ship to Norway. “And it is starving me in return. I simply don’t have it in me to chase after every errant plot thread, especially when they’re, with solid reasoning, claiming to be a positive influence. Or at least a neutral one. I just...can’t.” 

“So we let the spider go,” Tim posits, and Jon nods. 

“We let the spider go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the video game choice is INTEGRAL foreshadowing, i promise i'm not just name-dropping things i enjoy. also, i apologize for cliffhangering the last one so badly, genuinely forgot that it ended like...mid-argument. second also, i cannot reread this chapter without thinking of the 'how do three men in their 30s not have 800$ between them?' bit from iasip


	30. ch.30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Jon find a way out

“Why is that thing sitting on our living room table?” It’s the first words out of Tim’s mouth that morning, as he, still in his pajamas, looks on in horror at the magnetic reels of a tape recorder. Jon just motions for him to sit down on the couch next to him. So he does, keeping what he feels is a safe distance away from that thing. 

“Because I think it’s going to be important,” Jon affirms, turning over a cassette box in his hands like a talisman. “And I didn’t want to listen to it anywhere where prying eyes and ears might be able to reach it.” 

“So you brought it into our  _ house _ ? You brought the evil  _ home _ with you?” 

“I wanted to get rid of it. Even almost threw it away as I was looking through the box of tapes. And then it occurred to me,” his voice takes on a low, conspiratorial lilt as he leans in, continuing, “I don’t think the Eye wants me to  **know** whatever’s on this tape. I’m supposed to be the avatar of all its secrets, but not  _ this one _ . I think that’s important.” 

There’s a moment of hesitation, of both of them staring at the recorder in apprehension, before Tim speaks up. 

“So...are you gonna hit play, or what?” 

“I don’t think I can,” Jon admits, and so he sighs, pressing the play button on it himself. 

It’s Gertrude’s voice. Tim had only met her in person once, but he recognized her voice from the tapes they had been using to thwart the various rituals. She sounded almost kind at first, with a very grandmotherly air of quiet consternation. 

And then she begins to read. She relays a horrifying, grisly murder, replete with garden shears and vague, telling static forming into something resembling another voice. 

She’s speaking to a ghost. Tim realizes that, as he makes the connection between Mary Keay and her terrifying skin book that had nearly gotten Jon killed in America and the man speaking to their late Archivist. This was Eric Delano, Gerard Keay’s father. 

The poor man has to reckon not only with his own mortality, but also the fact that his wife, the mother of his child, had chopped him up and turned his consciousness into an encyclopedic prison. And she had given him to Gertrude Robinson. As a  _ gift _ . Tim felt more sympathy for the man than any of the other statement givers, at least in that moment. 

It’s heartbreaking as he asks after his son. Gertrude hasn’t seen him, but assures him that Mary is proud of the boy. That only seems to make him feel worse, considering who Mary was as a person. Eric isn’t even still human enough to feel the full weight of it, just, in his own words, “a memory someone wrote down”.

Gertrude brings up his previous work, stating that perhaps he got a little too close, in investigating a statement, to Mary’s true intentions and had to be dealt with. This confuses him, and he finally reveals the secret that Tim assumes The Eye is trying to keep from them. 

Eric Delano had quit the Archives. It’s simple, he says. The only price is your eyes. Tim clicks the tape off before it can even finish and he and Jon sit there in stunned silence. 

“That’s why all the books in her apartment had the eyes cut out.” Tim skips entirely over the fact that he’s implying he’s been in Gertrude’s apartment, hyperfocused on one small detail that Delano had let slip. 

“Jon, he said Gertrude was paranoid that ‘James’ was watching them. James Wright. That’s  _ not _ Elias.” 

“Well, yeah, I always assumed the director’s position was more of a title than anything,” Jon rationalizes. “It must give anyone that is tasked with the job powers, care of The Beholding. I never really thought it was  _ Elias  _ committing all his misdeeds for simple joie de vivre, he’s a servant of The Eye, just like us.” Tim gives him a powerful side-eye, so he adds, “One of its favorites, sure, but still a servant.” 

“Okay fine, let’s assume that Elias is just as much of a victim as us.” There’s a clear element of skepticism in Tim’s tone that he hopes is coming across properly. “That leaves us with...what? A really sad tape about a guy that lost his son and got murdered by his insane, skin-bookbinding wife?”

“It leaves us with a possible way out,” Jon points out. He gives Tim an uneasy look as he continues. “If we wanted to...quit.” 

“Don’t look at me like that, are you insane?” He’s almost offended that Jon would even think he’d consider it. “This isn’t an option for you, is it? You’re so connected to The Eye that...” he leaves the final part of the sentence unsaid, though they both know what he means. Jon would probably die if he attempted it. Being so weakened from lack of statements, not to mention all the other pain he’d incurred at the hands of the other avatars that, Eye-aside, still had beef with him and would continue to come after him; regardless of him putting in his cosmic 2 week notice. 

“That doesn’t mean  _ you _ can’t get out. Live a relatively normal life and just forget all about us and the Archive.” 

“I’m not going to run from my problems,” Tim reaffirms, with every fiber of his being. “And I’m not going to leave you to rot with all this bullshit. We’re in this together.” 

In all reality, the concept was terrifying to Tim even beyond the pain that he knows comes from ritually blinding yourself. Jon was his best friend. He could admit that shamelessly to himself now. Jon was his very best friend, the only person on this entire planet that had seen him at his worst; that had seen him drown in his own anger, let it overtake him until he was nothing but rage incarnate, lashing out at everyone and everything, and still decided that he was worthy of a second chance. That he was worthy of companionship, of compassion, of dare he say it, love. Platonic love, of course, because he was sure that Jon could never truly  _ love _ him, broken as he was, but he valued it the same. 

Without him, what would he do? Move out? Go back to his publishing company job? No, he was in too deep now, too invested, too attached to just give up. Hell or high water, he would be right there by Jon’s side. Always. 

“Should we tell the others?” he finally asks, and Jon considers it. 

“I think so. Basira and Daisy are kind of in the same situation that I am, but Melanie...” 

“Melanie’s going to want to go through with it,” Tim finishes his thought. 

“She’s not  _ marked _ by anything, not really. Not in the same way that we are.” Something about that has a strange ring to it, as if there’s a detail that he should really be picking up on, but he just can’t seem to grasp it. 

“She’s not an avatar?” he finally settles on, and Jon nods. “But that doesn’t make any sense.  _ I’m  _ not an avatar.  _ Basira’s  _ not an avatar. Doesn’t that make us unmarked too?” 

“I almost hate to say it, but I believe both of you have become proxy servants of our entities.” Jon pinches the bridge of his nose, frustrated with the way things have turned out. “Basira is a by-proxy avatar of The Hunt because of Daisy, and you-”

“I’m a by-proxy avatar of The Eye. God fucking damn it.” Tim gives the coffee table a frustrated kick and the tape recorder does a strange little wiggle, nearly falling off the paperback it’s resting on. 

“I would apologize for it, but it’s not really my fault.” 

“No, it’s not.” Tim was beginning to think that perhaps Annabelle Cane had a point about the false nature of free will. He’d fought The Eye at every turn, resisted its every influence, and he had still ended up right at the conclusion that he had feared. He was complicit in its dealings, in the suffering it brought to the world. “What do we...what do we do about it?”

“Short term? We tell the others about the way out. Help Melanie through...that ordeal.” Even Jon seems uncomfortable with how certain he is that she’ll go through with it. “Long term? We just keep going. Using the institute’s resources to research the entities and their acolytes. Finding rituals. Destroying them.” 

“Trying to undo some of the harm we’ve done,” Tim summarizes, and Jon nods solemnly. 

“We can never truly be absolved, The Eye is so utterly irredeemable that we’ve become tainted by its influence, but we can at least off-set some of the damage we’ve done. We can try to make things better.” He pauses for a moment, and then chuckles under his breath, as if he’s remembered something funny. “I think that’s something that Daisy told me, once.” 

“‘Kill ‘Em All Tonner’ told you that? Daisy ‘I once almost murdered you, specifically’ Tonner?”

“She’s actually surprisingly self-aware,” Jon defends her, “Once she stopped feeding The Hunt I think she started to see just how heavily it had been affecting her and just how many awful things she’d done. Just like...just like I did.” It’s then that some of the pieces click together in Tim’s head. 

“You stole a ‘few’ statements,” he reiterates Jon’s own words, and is unsurprised when he seems ashamed at hearing them repeated back to him. “It was more than a few, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” he finally admits. “A...considerable amount more than a few. And now I have to work to try to...to make that better.” 

“Okay.” Tim accepts it because he has to. If he thinks about it for longer than a second, he feels like he’s about to lose it entirely, so he accepts it. This was his life, this was where it was headed. It was, confusing philosophical Web logic be damned, his choice. “So we’ll play it by ear, then. Tell everyone about the way out and see who...see who’s left.” 

“Right.” Silence fills the room, just as Tim notices a glimmering web in the corner of the ceiling.

(END OF ACT ONE)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very nervous about posting this one, folks. story's far from over yet, i hit 100k on the doc last night and im still 20ish chapters off the ending, so...we continue to ball. next upload tomorrow is the start of martin's arc, so i do hope y'all stick around


	31. autumn comes when you're not yet done (ch.1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin makes a decision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: eye trauma

It was an extremely bland morning, just the same as all the others. He wakes up in his flat, surrounded by that ever-present fog, and shambles sleepily to the bathroom to brush his teeth and get ready for work. 

He looks in the mirror, those same pale, almost blank grey eyes staring back at him underneath his messy blonde fringe. He puts on his glasses, the image resolving into a perfect reflection. 

It’s too late in the morning to make breakfast, but he’s not all that concerned. He hasn’t exactly been  _ hungry _ in the traditional sense for a very long time now. Metaphysically hungry, yes, as every bit of him claws and clamors to disappear, to never be seen again. He takes the tube to work, and runs into a very familiar redhead, making a cup of tea in the breakroom. The man turns, a shocked look on his face as he nearly drops the sugar spoon into the drink entirely. 

“No way,” he whispers, and Martin smiles at him, glad to finally see him again. Or, well, to finally be seen  _ by  _ him. It had been harder and harder to...he supposed ‘materialize’ was the proper word, nowadays. Harder to let people see him, to interact with anything that wasn’t himself or that accursed fog that followed him around everywhere he went. It didn’t even add any silly ambiance, it just made him cold. But as Tim looks at him, it’s as if he’s just returned from the dead.

“Good to see you,” he remarks happily, motioning for Tim to hand him the cup of tea. He does, and sits down across the table from him, still staring in disbelief. They’ve had this same ‘meeting’ so many times now that Martin is immune to the reaction, simply waiting for him to calm down. “How are things?” 

It’s the only luxury he affords himself that goes against the isolation that Peter is always preaching to him about. He’s fine with sacrificing himself for the greater good, with fading away to nothing if it helps someone, if it gives his life a tangible value. But sometimes he misses his friends, sometimes the need to see them consumes his every waking thought, haunts his dreams, even. It makes him yearn for better times so painfully that he feels his heart might one day burst from his chest because of it. And so, when that happens, he goes to see Tim. 

“Awful,” he replies, in the usual vein of ‘something has gone horrifically awry in ways that we have not anticipated’. It was becoming the Archive party line, at this point. Along with everyone fobbing their problems off onto the others. “Daisy’s...not well.” 

Martin knows. He’s seen her languishing around the archives, trying to hide pained growls and aching limbs behind the stacks. Tim doesn’t have to explain, he already knows the problem. She’s stopped feeding The Hunt, and now it’s starving her in return, devouring her from the inside out until she’ll finally break and return to it. 

“And we have...some news to break. About a tape we’d found.” Martin finds the strange reverence in his voice strange. It’s tinged with vague dread, as most of their conversations usually are, but there’s something more to it, as Tim takes a deep breath and continues, “We found a way out.” 

“Out of the Archives?” he asks before he can even think about it. 

“Out of The Eye’s sight entirely, Jon thinks,” Tim nods, confirming. It was certainly good news, especially with a cosign from Jon, but the apprehension is still there, that still isn’t the whole truth. 

“Is it...is it scary?”

“What’s the best way to blind something?” Tim counters, and all at once, his dread is shared, a cold shiver running down Martin’s spine.

“You destroy its eyes.” Tim nods, confirming. 

“You destroy the eyes,” he repeats, particularly emphasizing ‘destroy’. 

“You’re not-” Martin begins to ask, absolutely aghast, before he’s cut off with a scoff. 

“Absolutely not. Not Jon and I, at least.” That phrasing didn’t bode well. Tim pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing in frustration and in that moment, all Martin can see is Jon. It shocks him so much that he feels himself start to fade, fog thickening as Tim blinks, looking around confused before picking up his coffee from the counter and wandering off. 

It hits him just how long he’s actually been ‘gone’. Next month would make almost an entire year since he’d agreed to help Peter, agreed to give himself over to The Lonely. Since he’d disappeared from the lives of everyone that had ever cared for him, truly cared. And now they were moving on. Tim and Jon had been living together long enough to pick up on each others’ mannerisms. Daisy came back from the dead, and even started to recover. And what was he doing? Fading, wasting, atrophying his soul until one day the only thing left would be his own loneliness. 

He suddenly didn’t want it. He didn’t want the powers, he didn’t want the responsibility, he didn’t want the endless nights of melancholia and empty streets. It’s that one little gesture that reminds him that this condition was forever, that time was moving on around him as he stagnated, still clinging to the hope that he was doing the right thing. But he’s not sure, can’t quite figure out what’s going on. 

He wanders through the hall until he reaches Jon’s office, peering in through the cracked door. His dear Archivist is sitting at his desk, going over what is presumably a folder of statements, cross-referencing and scribbling things down onto a notepad. His face is scrunched with concentration, glasses chain swaying as he tilts his head back and forth, as if he’s staring at a magic eye painting, looking for hidden meaning. And he’s wearing a very obviously too large Royal Holloway University hoodie despite, to Martin’s best recollection, having gone to Oxford. Tim, however, HAD gone to Holloway. 

The emotion that wells up is so strong that it almost takes Martin’s breath away as he recoils, leaning back against the wall for support. He can’t recognize it at first, everything that isn’t solitude unfamiliar to him after giving it free reign over him for so long. It’s  _ jealousy _ , he finally realizes. He’s  _ jealous _ . Weird.

The door swings open, startling him again, and Jon walks out and across the hall, closing the door behind him. There’s the sound of turned chairs as Martin presses his ear to the door, trying to eavesdrop before realizing that he could honestly just stand in the room and not be noticed. And so he does that instead, taking a seat at his desk just as Jon begins addressing the others. 

“I’ve... _ we’ve _ ,” he corrects, with a look at Tim that makes Martin frown, “found a way to be released from The Eye’s patronage.” There’s a beat of silence, as the information sinks in, really processes.

“You found a way to quit,” she simplifies, disbelief and suspicion and blind, open hope clear in her tone. Jon nods, and she breaks into a wide smile. “How?” 

That smile quickly vanishes, replaced by grim determination and a request for help.

++++++++++++++++++++++  
  


“Alright, who else has got their A-levels in Human Biology, besides me?” 

The entire staff of the Archives is gathered around Martin’s empty desk that they’ve turned into a makeshift operating table. Melanie is sitting in his chair, her hair tied back, ready to be leaned back, as a hush goes over the room. Martin watches from his lonely corner as Tim sighs, giving them all a disappointed look. 

“Seriously? None of you?” 

“I had a double first in history and  _ library science _ ,” Jon retorts, “Does that sound like the type of person to have scientific A-levels?” 

“I barely passed my GCSEs,” Melanie adds, with a nervous shrug. 

“I became a cop. Feel like that’s self-explanatory.” That’s Daisy, sitting by Melanie’s side for...presumably moral support. Personally, Martin would find LITERALLY anything more comforting than having that wolf sit next to him during a horrific, unskilled blinding surgery being performed by a coworker that he had once seen trip over his own feet, but to each their own. 

“Was also a cop,” Basira adds on, just to round out the carnival of errors. 

“You all drive me up a goddamn wall sometimes, you know that?” Tim sighs and takes a deep, centering breath. “Alright. So that leaves me to actually...to actually  _ do  _ the thing.” He picks up the exacto-knife that had, for whatever reason, been Melanie’s first choice of implement, turning it over in his hands before turning to Daisy. “When we’re done with the first one, call the ambulance,” he instructs firmly, and then turns to Jon. Maybe Martin imagines it, or maybe it’s The Lonely, changing his perspective to further torment him, but the way he looks at him is so soft, so besotted, that it makes his heart break. “Can you call Georgie?”

“I’ll tell her to meet us at the hospital,” Jon confirms. He motions at Melanie, who hands him her phone, and then steps out into the hallway to make the call. 

“Basira, can you...” he trails off and Martin steps closer, horrified and trying to get a better look, as she holds Melanie’s head in her hands firmly, pressing her back to the desk as she looks up, for the final time, with terrified eyes. “Are you-”

“Just do it,” she commands, trying to shake her head and failing. “Get it over with.”

Martin doesn’t even make it past the first cut. He hears the squelching sound, the start of Melanie’s scream, and promptly runs out into the hallway. The scream follows him, though, as he crumples down to the floor, backed against the wall with his legs drawn to his chest. 

Was this a panic attack? Was he actually having a panic attack? It had been so long, he wasn’t even sure he was capable of them anymore. The screams continue, before tapering off into pitched, wracking sobs that echo down the empty corridor like the wailing of a banshee. 

This wasn’t right, none of this was right! He had given up his agency, his entire life, even, under the impression that his friends would be safe. That they wouldn’t be forced to suffer, that they would get to be happy. And yet, this was still happening. Every week, it seemed, there was some new danger that he was unable to protect them from. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t bloody fair. 

And then the solution springs to mind, fully formed and utterly inelegant in its construction. He needed more time. Time, the one thing that even he couldn’t replace. But he knew someone that could. Someone whose entire bit was being freed from those ever-so-pesky laws of linearity. And he knew just how to find her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woke up, read the comments, cried happy tears. thank you all so very much <3
> 
> quick TW: if you have to skip The Spiral episodes of the podcast, probably going to want to skip the first half of this arc entirely
> 
> also! new arc subtitle! that lyric from francis forever by mitski just...fits


	32. ch.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin makes a deal with Helen

He uses the chaos following Melanie’s...he didn’t even want to think about it. If he thought about what just happened for more than just a moment, it started to make him feel physically ill. Regardless, he makes use of the chaos to sneak into Jon’s office while he knows it will be empty. 

It’s exactly how he remembers it, as he takes a seat at the desk. Awful, uncomfortable leather chair, hideous hunter green walls, and that perpetually filthy fake pine linoleum. The sword is still there, too, hanging in its glass case and continuing to throw off the world’s most rancid vibes. He wonders how Jon puts up with it. 

It’s easy to find a notepad and pen, and much harder to put his plan into words on it. 

‘Dear Jon’, he starts it, before reconsidering and correcting it to, ‘Dear Jon and Tim’. And he explains everything. The Lonely, The Extinction, the deal he’d made with Peter Lukas for the sake of everyone that he was only now realizing had been a lie. He explains how he’d been watching over them for months, a silent observer to all the tragedies they had been dragged into by the entities that were content to hunt them like prey animals. He says he’s sorry. He says he’s going to try to fix it. And he tells them the truth. 

‘I’m going to see Helen. To try to fix this. But if I don't return’, he continues, tears in his eyes as he finishes the final paragraph. ‘Then I hope you forget me. Live happy lives, or at least the closest we have to them now.’ He signs the letter, neatly folding it and writing Jon’s name on the front, leaving it in the center of his desk. 

Helen isn’t hard to find. He walks around the archive for less than five minutes before finally noticing the bright purple door, in the center of what was usually just a blank wall. He hesitates, hand just about to knock, as it swings open. 

“Ah, The Lonely’s prodigal son,” Helen greets him, grin full of monstrous ever-shifting teeth taking up the better part of where her face should be. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“You want to...to help us, right? You said as much to Tim, so don’t try to lie to me.” The Distortion chuckles, swarms, pulses. 

“If you want the truth, then perhaps you’re barking up the wrong tree,” she begins, all pomp and circumstance, “I am-” 

“‘The throat of delusion, the false future, the physical embodiment of lies incarnate’,” Martin cuts her off. “I know. Contrary to popular belief, I do  _ work _ here. I read the statements, I know all about you.” 

“And yet, here you are. Asking me to be honest.” She’s not confused. More so intrigued as she takes a step forward, and he retreats, keeping his distance. “So what is it that you want, Martin? Power? Answers? A free drug trip? Because honestly I wouldn’t put it past someone of your salary to-” 

“Time!” Martin finally cuts her off, near screaming in frustration as he tries and fails to look straight at her. God, he hated her. He hated The Spiral and all its awful, migraine inducing little cronies, but he  _ needed _ her help. “I need more time.” 

“The Spiral doesn’t control time,” Helen points out, and he shakes his head vehemently. 

“You don’t control it. That’s the whole point. You don’t even acknowledge it.” 

“Well. Technically yes.” She’s much more unhappy now, actually putting thought into it with an exaggerated frown. “I just don’t care much for the linearity of it all. So I ignore it. But why do you, 2 dimensional little file clerk, want access to The Spiral’s powers so badly?” 

She doesn’t wait for him to answer, reaching back and closing that bright purple door and then reopening it with a flourish. She beckons him in, and so he follows, cautiously, ready at any moment for some sort of horror beyond description to jump out at him. But, beyond the door, there is simply a bright garden. The sun is shining high over the topiaries clipped into neat animal shapes, the fountains sparkling and bubbling, the two chairs set up facing each other with a little table in the middle. Helen takes one, and so Martin takes the other, nervously waiting for her to address him again. 

“Where are we?” he finally asks, after she just stares him down for an indeterminate amount of time. She shrugs, giving the exquisite garden another look. 

“Not sure. Does it matter? I just wanted somewhere nice for us to discuss our terms.” 

“Our...terms?” Martin questions, and she smiles and nods her head. “Of course. And those would be...?”

“Nothing too disagreeable,” she assures, sickly smile still pasted onto her too large face. “For one, I won’t be accompanying you. You’ll have to find your own way out.” She picks at the underside of her long fingernails, as if bored. “I’m very busy, you know. I don’t have time to babysit.”

“That’s fine.” It very much was  _ not  _ fine, not really. In fact, it was so terrifying of a thought, being trapped in the Spiral yet again without a map, that he felt his hands start to shake. He holds them together in his lap, trying to still them before she can pick up on it. 

“Splendid. Then I simply have one more request.” She leans forward and suddenly the garden is pitch black, the glow emanating from her dress the only thing illuminating her as her mouth curls and curls and curls upward. “I want to know why. Why go through all the trouble of trying to attempt, and we’ll call it like it is,  _ time travel _ using the power of The Spiral, of all things? What possessed your sweet little brain to think that this was all worth the effort?” 

There’s something crawling in the dark now. Martin can hear it, even as he continues to face down Helen. Something is dragging itself through the grass. He hears bushes shake, hears something heavy slide in his direction. Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe this is all one of Helen’s stupid tricks. Whatever it is, it’s making him feel on edge, and he curses himself again for this stupid plan. 

“For Jon,” he finally admits, and Helen seems all too pleased with herself. 

“I always knew the two of you had something going on. You seem like the type to have a thing for redheads.” The confusion is almost so strong that it cancels out his fear. 

“Jon’s not a redhead,” he corrects her, and she makes a ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’ hand gesture. 

“Yes he is. The tall one. Always yelling and getting injured and fussing over my Archivist. I don’t remember your petty human names.” 

“Jon  **is** the Archivist.” It’s then that Helen seems to have a revelation, eyes growing wide as she turns back to Martin with renewed enthusiasm. “But does that mean...does that mean you’ll help me?” 

“Oh of course I will!” She seems quite pleased, as the sun rises in the distance behind her, finally bringing some light back to the garden. “There’s nothing I love more than letting someone experience their  _ own _ delusions! Makes it all seem so very personal.” 

“What do you mean, ‘own del-’.” Before he can continue, she kicks a leg out, tipping his chair back. He expects to hit the ground, braces for it, and instead continues falling. And falling and falling and falling. He doesn’t even scream, all the fear welling up within him so quickly that he’s paralyzed, clutching the wicker chair, until finally he blinks and is right-side up again.   
He quickly jumps from the chair, as if staying in it too long will make him fall again, and then looks around. He’s in an apartment that he barely recognizes, though he knows he’s seen it at least once in real life. His chair has now become a soft couch, in a living room piled with paperback books on nearly every surface. He can see into the kitchen, with dishes drying neatly in a rack. 

There’s a bright purple sticky note on the door and he rushes to it, desperate for any context at all for where he was. It said, simply, “It doesn’t matter which way you go, so long as you get somewhere.” With a little smiley face next to it. Martin crumples it up and tosses it across the room in frustration. Alright. Helen wants to recreate Alice in Wonderland? Fine. He would be Alice, then. But first, he had to figure out where he was. 

He’s nearly  _ certain _ that he’s been here before. Wandering into the hallway only intensifies the feeling, as he finds a regular enough looking bathroom that he peeks into, not investigating too hard, and a regular looking bedroom. Nothing out of place, but nothing he remembers specifically either. And then, just as he’s about to leave through the front door, he notices something sitting on the counter. A pair of wire-frame glasses, with one lense missing and the other splintered into a veritable spider’s web of cracks. He doesn’t know why, but he takes them with him, holding tight to them as he cracks the door open, looking carefully out into whatever world was waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as a very much web-aligned person, any time i have to even THINK about the spiral i get an instantaneous migraine, but i hope we at least sorta like this depiction of helen. tried to make her spooky and unknowable without dipping all the way into body horror


	33. ch.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin has a bad time (worm-related)

The door swings open, and immediately Martin is met with a mind-numbing sight. He’s walked into the breakroom of the office, but everything is just...wrong. The walls, the floor, the furniture. They all seem to be made out of wriggling, glowing neon worms. Every single surface in the room was pulsating as if made from the flesh of some great fluorescent beast, writhing and tensing in time with its hulking breaths. 

And that was to say nothing of the ghosts. There were, to Martin’s best count, 54 of them. They were scattered all around the room, leaning against the counters, sitting at the table, pacing in the open space. All half-corporeal and translucent, all speaking over each other in a loud cacophony, all with the same book in their hands. And all of them looked exactly like Tim. 

He takes a shaky step forward, his boot making a thick squelch as it smashes several of the worms underfoot into oozing pink and blue jelly. When he lifts it again, it comes back sticky. The ghosts seem to resolve, then, one becoming more solid than the others as it leans against the fridge. He’s reciting the first book of Hyperion, Martin recognizes. 

“Why should I ope’ thy melancholy eyes? Saturn, sleep on, while at thy feet I weep,” the ghost that Martin refuses to even consider as Tim recites, with all the blatant boredom of a year 9 being forced to read Catcher in The Rye. Martin blinks and the ghost is gone, sound now coming from behind him. He turns quickly, and there’s another one sitting at the breakroom table, still reciting from that same compendium. 

“Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave,” the ghost recites. “And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.” Its other hand is empty, but it mimes writing something in the book anyway, before it, too, disappears. Across from it, in the other chair, another ghost appears, already mid sentence. 

“-over sea and o’er land, where furrows are new to the plow.” 

It’s Keats, Martin finally recognizes, as the ghosts continue to switch off with passages from Hyperion, from Endymion, from the untitled sonnets that had been published after his death. The cacophony is all the words of his favorite poet, being dutifully recited by Tim. He’d consider it one of Helen’s cruel tricks if he hadn’t seen the man in the breakroom with that compendium everyday himself. 

He continues to stare at the apparitions, all of whom pay him no mind as they continue with their one-man poetry club. It hits him, then, just how much effort Tim put into this. It’s clear that he’s not having a good time. Even Martin can admit that Keats is...an acquired taste at best. And yet, Tim had read all of his work. He had marked off every single one in that little book, just in the hope of remembering something,  _ anything  _ about his lost friend. 

Martin sloshes up to one of the ghosts, preferring to wade through the multi-colored worms than squish them, and tries to take the book from its hands. It divests it and then vanishes, the rest of the ghosts disappearing with it. The wormed chair it had just been occupying sheds its technicolor skin, becoming normal once again. Martin takes a cautious seat, only looking at the book when he’s entirely sure the chair won’t suddenly revert. 

Each and every poem, verse, ode, is marked off with a little x. Some have derisive comments next to them, calling the works “too saccharine” and “overworked”. Those ones make Martin smile, their little glimpses into Tim’s mind the closest he’s felt to anyone in a very long time. And then, right at the very end, is a long paragraph next to the sonnet “You Say You Love”. 

‘I like this one,’ it reads simply, in messy scrawl. ‘I think Martin would have really liked this one, too.’

He shuts the book, setting it down on the wormy table where it promptly dissolves into a writhing mass, spilling off the surface and onto the floor just as he removes his shoes from the splash zone. Tim, or whatever version of him The Spiral was content to show him, was correct. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d even  _ seen  _ the phrase “O love me truly” and not immediately been emotionally compromised. It was his absolute favorite of Keats’s works. 

It struck Martin just how well Tim had known him, even when he hadn’t actually remembered him. I mean, hell, he’d gone through all the trouble of reading Keats’s entire body of work in some vain hope that it would trigger a memory that was almost surely locked behind the walls of The Lonely. And he knew that, had to have, and had tried anyway. 

What Martin doesn’t understand is  _ why _ . Why was The Distortion choosing this, of all things, to show him? It was quite literally the master of delusion and lies. Why would it show him something that was such an objective truth? Just to show off its funny little worm room? 

“The delusions are your own, dear,” Helen offers, suddenly in the seat across from him at the table. Her outfit has gone from glowing, shifting colors to great, unknowable shapes, spinning and flipping like a polygon glitch. It hurts to look at. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. “I’m just showing them to you so that you can fully accept them.” 

“Why?” He’s starting to get a migraine, chooses instead to look at the swirling worm table instead of directly at her. 

“Why not?” She says it as if it’s the only answer that makes sense. “You want help, I want to see someone claw their way out of their own carefully constructed fortress of a mind. It’s a high-return scenario for both of us.” 

“Wait, this is...”

“This is your mind, yes,” she confirms, and then immediately thinks better of it. “Well, your mind coupled with the influence of The Spiral. Necessity of the transaction, really.” 

“That’s not what I-” he begins, ready to argue, and she cuts him off with that high, haunting laugh. 

“Of course it’s not what you asked for. I’m not a takeaway restaurant. No, if you truly do want your perfect little solution, you’ll work for it. You’ll face all the lies you’ve been telling yourself.” 

“And by confronting them, afraid, I’ll be feeding your entity,” he extrapolates, and Helen gives him a proud nod. Or at least he assumes so. It was still very difficult to look at her. 

“The Spiral gets its dues, gets to feed on your innocent little fears, and you get to understand. A good deal, is it not?” She doesn’t wait for him to respond, the room simply snapping to normalcy around Martin as she disappears. 

The breakroom now looks...utterly normal. The walls are the same blank beige, the floor still patterned with disgusting pine linoleum, the furniture no longer wriggling and vaguely sticky. Even his shoes are clean, no evidence of the worm slime on them at all. The only difference is that a cup of tea has appeared in front of him. It’s still steaming, freshly made, and in his favorite mug, too. 

You couldn’t pay him enough money to actually  _ drink _ it, but he does stare at it for a good while, somewhat thrown off by its presence. And then he starts to examine the room. He opens cupboards, drawers, even the empty freezer as he looks for something, anything, that might tell him why his mind had brought him here. Why this room, this scene, was what it wanted to show him. He comes up blank for answers, and also for anything else. The room is entirely empty save for him and that cup of tea. 

He goes back to it, still warm, as if it’s waiting for him, and cautiously takes a small sip. It’s his perfect cup, green tea with one spoon of sugar, just the way Tim always made it for him. Was that it, then? The tea? Was he just thirsty? The throughline to all of this was becoming less and less clear as he sat, sipping occasionally. He could place most of it. The Keats, the breakroom, the horrifying glowy worms. But he couldn't place Tim. At least, not in the context he wanted from this little adventure. He was here to find a way back so that he could regain the time he’d wasted on Lukas’s plan, that he’d wasted being absorbed by The Lonely. So why was a vision of Tim the first thing his mind jumped to? 

The door behind him creaks ever so slightly, and he jumps, turning to see that it is open once more. He sets the cup on the table, leaving it there as he carefully approaches the bright purple frame. It didn’t look like anything was...leaking from it. Extra mind-gunk, or whatever horrifying alternative he knew was in his near future. No worms, no rolling fog. 

Perhaps that was it, then. The tea was to warm him up so that the fog would dissipate. And Tim had always been the one to make him his morning cup, even when he couldn’t remember why he was doing it. Yes, that had to be the answer. Martin clung to the logic as he tipped his foot around the edge of the door, peering into the room beyond. It’s nothing but blank space, as if it just hasn’t loaded in yet. He sighs, knowing that it would probably only change into its true form the second he stepped through the door, proper. Another horrible little jump-scare wrung out of him by The Distortion for the glory of its trickster entity. 

He sighs, steeling himself to enter, and remembers the glasses he’s taken from the previous room. He must have hidden them away when Helen appeared, because they seem to rematerialize in a puff of fog in his palm when he holds out his hand. They’re the same as they were before, broken and cracked and eerily familiar as he stares into that webbed lense. The answer was right on the precipice of his mind, but for some reason it just wasn’t clicking, much to his eternal frustration. He puts the glasses into his pocket and turns back to the door, still displaying that blank little waiting room. He closes it, gently, and then takes a deep breath, closing his eyes and opening it. He takes a step through, thankful that his foot hits solid ground. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact, keats was not a prolific poet, he only had 54 published pieces. and, unfortunately, i very much agree with tim that they are not that good. i will, however, concede this: all the eye imagery? IMMACULATE to exploit for the purposes of tma fic. this man uses the word 'eye' like i use 'considers', it goes NUTS

**Author's Note:**

> edited disclaimer (2x): at time of publishing, i am still 15 chapters off finishing the last arc in my draft. i have finally hit 300 pages. so this is going to be a long haul fic. if you're like me and usually don't read things until they're finished, wait about...2 months and come back and i should probably have it finished. 
> 
> ANYWAY. i have not forgiven jonathan for his tim murdering crimes. so i decided to write a fic spanning three seasons of canon with three separate povs. my coping mechanisms could not get any weirder at this point. thank you for reading.


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